Bounty on the Mutiny
by Turiya Foul
Summary: Morrick Evans, the lout from Pizza Is, has returned, older, wiser, still loveable and strange, like his creator! and he's doing stuff. Bad summary, but the story's good. Read and review!
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own anything except Morrick and his people. In fact, I barely own anyone besides Morrick, since they're all copyrighted species. I wonder how one might apply for a job as a "writer". Meh, I'd probably end up with "waiter" instead.

---

I spun my chair around in a circle, once, twice, three times, and on the third turn, K'ata told me to stop. I would have continued spinning and ignored her, as I usually did, but something in the queasy tone of her voice made me desist. I looked over at her hunched form and decided that it was the lack of gravity. I had no problem with zero gravity, but for her, a larger creature recovering from both battle and alien salmonella, it was probably hell.

"Liera?" I asked the ship's computer.

"Yes, Junior Commander Evans?" the computer's pleasant female voice replied.

"When can we expect gravity to return?" I asked.

"Stable gravity will return when the internal gravity turbine system commences rotation."

"And when will that happen?"

"In approximately three hours and thirty-eight minutes."

"Thank you, Liera. That will be all." I looked at K'ata again and suggested, "Maybe you should just go to sickbay."

"You cannot control a ship, Morrick," she replied so softly that even my nanyte-assisted senses had trouble hearing her.

"I did well enough when you were surface-side. And when you were ill. And when you were injured and we were being chased by renegade pirates. You're bad off, K'ata. Sickbay's there for a reason, you know."

She glared at me, then nodded. "Liera, beam me to sickbay," she muttered, and that was that.

I spun around in my chair, once, twice, a third time. No one told me to stop.

---

I felt my insides settle back into their normal positions as my boots touched the deck and my backside sank into my chair. I told Liera to wake K'ata up and began preparing my apology speech. Oh, I had been in the right this time, but she was my commanding officer no matter what, and she had been through a lot more than I had in the past few days, so apologizing was really the least I could do.

She wasn't angry at me, though. She walked through the door a few minutes later with a spring in her step and a lavender glow in her eyes, waving aside my apology with a reply that her nap had done her good and that we hadn't been blown up, so I'd done a fairly good job. Relieved, I ran a scan on her and found that her wounds were nearly healed and that her virus was completely gone.

"Liera, set a course for the fleet," I said cheerfully.

"Liera, cancel that order and continue on course." K'ata looked at me and said, "We still have work to do."

"What work?" I asked incredulously. "We've already won two battles out of two, stopped a plague at great cost to you, and saved a planet full of pacifists from being enslaved. I think we deserve a break."

"We have a holiday after this. Now listen. 'Locate and capture Renox scientist and weaponry developer Kayla Micosucci and return her to her home embassy for the proffered bounty.' Kou'al's already found her, and the accounts are ready for the massive influx of credit, so all we have to do is go get her." She settled back into her chair and gave a satisfied series of clicks.

I blinked. Several times. "You," I said finally, "are an idiot."

"You aren't too bright yourself, but please, enlighten me as to why _I'm_ an idiot." She wasn't angry, just curious. I'm lucky to have a laid back commanding officer.

"A Renox scientist. That's alright. We can deal with that. But a _weaponry developer_? We'll die! We'll fall into a trap before we're even in sounding range. Hell, we're probably already _in _a trap just for considering it."

"Done yet?" I nodded. "One, we're in sounding range already. Two, there's noting to make traps with. And three, even if there was something to make traps with, Micosucci could only watch and plot miserably, as she's badly wounded."

I thought about this for a moment. "If she's that badly wounded, mightn't she be _dead_?" I was considering the credit. Live bounties were usually higher than dead ones.

"Doesn't matter," K'ata said, thinking along the same lines as me. "It doesn't say live or dead on the dispatch, so we're to assume they don't care. So, are you in or what?"

I sighed. A bounty was always good padding for the old financial ego. "What's the percentage?" I asked.

She consulted her screen. "Kou'al, as our illustrious leader, gets forty, and we each get thirty. Same as always. So…?"

"Alright."

---

We each repaired to our rooms to prepare for the hunt. K'ata would probably go through some cumbersome ritual, lighting incense and calling up the gods or goddesses she associated with our task.

Me, I just wanted to change clothes. I caught sight of myself in my mirror. A stocky young man met my gaze, with space-pale skin, full, thick, bushy, dark brown hair and lively blue eyes. I was five foot eight and strong, which for a sixteen year old isn't too bad. The blue jumpsuit I wore wouldn't work for an off-world escapade, so I changed into a tougher, skintight suit and donned my armor over it.

My armor was made in an imitation of the Yautja _awuasa_, which consisted of a strong, computer-controlled under-mesh for keeping either warm or cool and helping conduct the invisibility-jigger, then heavily decorated plate armor, and then one's weapons, trophies, and kits. Mine had the mesh and thinner, overlapping plates controlled, like everything else, by my forearm computer. I wore weighted gauntlets, called _cestuses_ by the Romans, and hidden in those were long, retractable blades, and at my back was the nine foot fighting spear, currently retracted to three feet and in easy reach. And, last, securely fixed to my belt until I should need it, was a high power light-matter saber.

Yes, I have a light saber. No, it isn't pink. And no, it isn't like in the movies. But it's _damn_ cool. The "blade" is three and a half feet in length, and it's kept in control with heavy duty laser crystals. K'ata gave it to me when we went on our first mission together, and I've taken it with me every time since.

Thus prepared, I went back to the bridge and waited for K'ata. And waited. And waited. When she finally emerged, I jumped. Well, I usually always jump when she appears, since no normal person can get used to a nine foot tall Yautja female, but she usually wasn't this scary. She was wearing trophies today. (For anyone unfamiliar with the term, trophies are pieces of whatever one hunted, such as bones, teeth, claws, hides, hair, pelts, etc.) A long, spiny vertebrae was draped over her shoulder, and a collection of tiny, banana-shaped sculls was wrapped around each wrist.

"Uh, Kali, Destroyer of the Universe and Fashion as we know it? Your car is waiting." I'm very lucky that there isn't anything to throw on the bridge.

She laughed sarcastically. "Very funny. You should have your own broadcast."

"I do. But you're just…" I shook my head. "We just need to capture the poor girl, not make her laugh so hard she - " I was cut off as the computer beeped. "What the…?"

"Tend to that while I put these up," K'ata said, defeated.

"Aye, Captain." I looked at the various scans that were coming in constantly now that we were close to the planet. Nothing odd. And yet, the thing was beeping. "Liera?" I asked. I received no reply. "Liera!" I said again, loudly.

"Liera won't be here anymore," a deadly male voice replied. "And neither will you."

---

I woke, muggy-headed and stiff, in what appeared to be a hammock. My armor and weapons were gone, but at least I was dressed. I unzipped the top of my jumpsuit and shucked it off, leaving myself in a thin white t-shirt and the pants-part of the suit. I then fell gracelessly out of the hammock and onto the floor.

"Oh, very nice," that same deadly male voice said, only this time it was annoyingly chortle-filled rather than deadly. "You're the first one to do that."

"What, fall out of a hammock?" I asked, nursing my face, which is what I fell on. "I must be the first one you put in the hammock, then."

"Well, yeah, but…" the voice was now embarrassed, along with visible. A pale, slim young man with long, straight, white hair and huge dark eyes was seated on a tall stool, staring at me.

"Ugh," I said. "See, this is where you people get yourselves laughed at."

His awkward, cheery expression fell. "What do you mean?"

"You all - all of you! Every one! - use the overly dramatic, creepy voice when you abduct me, and then, what am I faced with?" I gestured at him. "A skinny little kid who's too fond of his beaming technology. Just do yourself a favor and send me back to my ship, will you?"

He smiled slowly, showing quite a lot of sharp, white teeth. "There's where you're wrong. Have you ever seen _Saw II_?"

"Oh," I said. "Err…" I ran to the nearest wall I could reach and began beating upon it. "K'ata!" I screamed. "K'ata, there's a psycho holding me hostage and wanting to play movie trivia with me! Help!"

"She can't hear you. She's still on your ship." The boy-thing laughed. "Now, what to do…" He looked around, thinking. He looked, and thought, and looked, and thought, and looked around some more.

"Don't tell me. You abducted me on a whim and you now have no idea what to do with me."

"Yeah. That's pretty much it." He scuffed the floor with the toe of his boot as I put my hands on my hips. "Wanna play Scrabble?"

"No. I want to go back to my ship."

He looked at me mournfully for a moment and then burst into tears.

"You have got to be kidding me," I said dubiously.

---

The long and short of it was basically that the poor guy was desperately lonely. His 'master' had gone off somewhere without a word several years ago, and he kept himself sane by abducting people from passing spaceships.

He was a brilliant scientist, though. Originally, he had been a Wraith, but his master had modified him to the point where he was 'safe' - that is, he didn't need to feed physically. And he himself had changed the rest.

Recognizing his gene-tinkering propensity as useful, I asked if he might like to accompany me back to my ship.

"Oh, no," he said dolefully. "Much as I would like that, I can't. What if my master returns?"

I smiled sadly at him. "There's a little test we can run. I'm a bounty hunter, you see. I only joined up about a year and a half ago, but I know most of the ones that have been captured over the last decade or so. What's your 'master's' name?"

He sniffled sadly. "Everin Michelov."

I blinked. Several times. "Err, you wouldn't be referring to the Amnion scientist, would you?"

"Yep. Why, did you get him?"

"No. I didn't. But my boss did. One of your guy's hands is in my guy's trophy room."

He turned green. Bright, algae-like green. It was rather funny.

"Hey, chill out, dude. The rest of him is fine, though. I think he's in some sort of whacked-up scientist prison, with the likes of Jumba Jookiba and that freaky little Asgard dude Loki. Even if he's missing a hand, at least he's got good company. So, you coming with or not?"

Needless to say, he came with. He grabbed several mass storage devices and retrieved a large bag which he chucked at me. "Your things."

"Thanks. A word of advice?"

"Hmm?" he asked.

"Don't ever touch my light saber again."

"That sounded…" He paused. "Never mind. Let's go."

---

We beamed back up to the ship and found K'ata hard at work trying to find me. She hadn't noticed our arrival, that's how hard she was working.

So, I crept up behind her and poked her side, where all females seem to be ticklish. As she leapt about a foot in the air, which is saying something with magnetic-lock boots on, I said happily, "Hi. I'm back! And I brought a friend."

I was promptly picked up by my throat and thrown across the bridge. It was remarkably similar to the good old days, when this was done to me several times a day, along with several good cuffs upside the head and a nice tumble down the stairs at the end of the day. Yes, I had a very violent childhood, even more so when K'ata came to stay with me.

Nevertheless, in my ripe old age, I've gotten used to a little more respect, or at least courtesy. So, when the little yellow birds stopped fluttering around my head, I sat up and looked at her to see if perhaps there were needles filled with some strange hallucinogen sticking out of her.

And found myself looking at not a her, but a him.

So, I did what any sensible human would have done. I screamed and fainted.

---

The young Wraith boy was shaking me. I considered breaking his wrists, but it would have been too easy, and therefore not honorable. So, I yielded and opened my eyes to glare at him and prove that yes, I was indeed alive.

"They made me do it!" was the first thing he said. Then he asked if I was alright, to which I replied that yes, I was well enough, and what the hell did he mean by his first exclamation?

"It was a trap. The guy that threw you, he's the leader. They made me do it, said that if I didn't, they'd kill me. They've got your captain, and they're returning her to the Cre'Maerean Order." He stared at me as though I was changing into a large reptile and shrank back, terrified.

"Well, that was a bad thing for you to do," I said calmly. "And unlike you, when I use the deadly voice, I actually intend to make someone die. Tell me your name," I ordered him.

"No, I can't, they told me - "

"Forget what they told you, think about what I'm telling you." I cornered him and placed my hand delicately on his shoulder, fully intending to break the bones if he resisted. "I'm willing to forgive you, but only if you cooperate."

He winced at my touch. "My name is Ammik, and I know K'ata. I've created weapons for her before."

"Yes, I remember when we were on Earth she mentioned writing to you," I mused.

"About the very 'light saber' you carry," he said. "That's why they decided to use me. I know things."

"Well, Ammik, what do you know about bounty hunting?" I asked, knowing quite well that I'd probably be keelhauled - imagine it, just try - if I didn't finish my job.

"I know that it's highly unpleasant, and that Micosucci is probably dead by now," he said, looking me straight in the eye and not blinking.

"You know things," I agreed. "But still, the bounty remains."

"Let's go get her, then. I know the planet well, and there's lots of stuff that can kill you if you don't watch for it." Ho looked away. "When are you going to ask me about the kidnappers?" he asked softly.

"Whenever you're ready to tell me things," I replied. "And whenever you're ready to tell me the truth about those things." He looked at me and looked away.

"Let's find the bounty," he said.

---

It didn't take us long to find Micosucci. A short walk and a wade through a thin stream and we had her. She was unconscious, which made our job both terribly difficult and dreadfully easy, but at least there was no chatter. A long gash in her side revealed the probable cause of her unconsciousness, i.e., blood loss, but Ammik said that it still might be remedied, and I agreed with him.

She was small and compact, in the way of her species, and she was feather light due to loss of fat, dehydration, and the little-known fact that Renox bones are hollow. (It's little-known because few people have lived to broadcast it; the Renox as a species are homicidal and reclusive, go figure.) Ammik made to take hold of her feet and carry her back to the ship, real civilized like, but I simply plucked her up from his grasp and slung her over my shoulder like a sack of scrawny potatoes.

"You'll kill her," Ammik warned me.

"Yes, but I'll still get the bounty," I retorted firmly.

"Doesn't matter," he told me. "You'll still have killed her."

"And your betrayal could very well kill K'ata, so let's not talk about it right now, shall we?" I asked testily. He turned green again but didn't reply.

We returned to the small landing craft we had used. It wasn't as efficient as beaming, but I had never liked beaming anyway. Flying the little ship was a lot like driving, and I, the sixteen year old from Earth, well, if you don't get the picture, you're dense. The computer recognized me and let us phase through the hull. Once in, I secured Micosucci into a life-pod, a tube-like miniature sickbay. Her vitals would be monitored, she would be un-dehydrated, her wound would be taken care of… Sometimes, after a long shift fleet-side, I want to tuck into one of the things myself.

Ammik was hiding something, I could tell. And the suspicious bulge in his breast pocket didn't help his case much. But still, I decided to take the high road and interrogate him stealthily.

"Hey, Ammik?" I asked, making him jump.

"Wh-what?" he managed to reply.

"Whatcha got?" I asked sweetly.

"Wh-what do you mean?" he asked, trying to play innocent.

"What did you pick up at Micosucci's site and are you carrying in your breast pocket, which I can see, clear as day, and yet I have no idea what it might be?"

"Oh," he said, dejected, "that." He brought it out. It proved to be a small, pinkish crystal. "Do you know what it is now?" he asked uncertainly.

"A small, pinkish crystal?" I asked. "Oh, but that can't be the limit of its - and your - prowess, can it?"

"This type of crystal is used in keeping massive files or documents safe, since not only is it extremely pliant, and easy to write to, but it is also incorruptible. Now, have you ever heard of mind-siphoning?"

"Nope," I said, cheerfully ignorant.

"It's basically where a person's mind is copied to some media and then erased from their body. It's usually done to the most dangerous of criminals, if you can see why." Ammik looked at me, and I saw his soul rushing up in his eyes. "Morrick, Micosucci and I were to be wed. It's all one betrayal after another. And this," he said as he held the crystal up to the light, "is my fiancée's mind, I think."

"Oh," I said. "Shit."

"Indeed." He spun back and looked at the life-pod, placed his hands on the smooth, white surface. "Morrick, I know she can be helped, but I just don't know _how_."

"Uh, loverboy? There's a BOUNTY on her head. You can no more save her than I can perform miraculous foot surgery!" I stepped forward. "I know, just as much as anyone else, what it's like to lose the woman you love. And I know, I know, that you'll live. You'll find another. You'll be happy. I'm not saying you have to move on now, but you need to get over it and be a functional crew member, alright?"

He continued to stand there with his hands on the pod, head bowed and shoulders slumped. I took hold of his shoulder and turned him forcibly to face me. "When your commander speaks, you, if not already at attention, will at least give him the courtesy of your notice. Is that clear?"

Given the fact that my nose was about half a centimeter from his, it was very intimidating. "Yes, Morrick," Ammik said sadly. I thunked him on the head soundly. "I mean sir," he said, finally getting the picture that I was pulling rank on him.

"Good. Now, give me the crystal," I ordered him. At this he balked, but my resolve was firmer. (And also larger. Ha, I had to add that.) "No, give me the crystal, or I'll break your hand. In fact, I may still do that, simply because of your insubordination. Give it!" I said, for the third time total.

And the little bastard refused. I couldn't believe it. He was refusing me when he owed his measly little life to me! "I can't," he whispered. "It's all I have left."

"Rule thirty-four on this the good ship _Noon Star_," which was a reference to the invisibility of the stars at noon (cheeky, eh?), "no melodramatic, emotional scenes." I pulled a large and imposing gun from my hip holster. "Give me that damned crystal or I will shoot you. I had been thinking of taking you on as crew, but now that your true character is revealed…" I let the words trail off. Everyone knows that a captain's crew must be obedient.

His eyes were huge. "You, you wouldn't," he said in a challenge of denial.

I fired and hit the deck by his feet. Then I returned my aim to his head. "I would," I said simply.

He had put his hands up when the gun had come out. He pursed his lips and looked at me, pleading. "Please," he said softly. "She's all I have, and I can't let you destroy her."

I fired again and hit a piece of deck closer to his booted feet, but he didn't jump. I didn't want to kill him, really. He'd be good crew, loyal, respectful, but right now he was a lot like a frisky colt. Or a depressed colt, I thought as I noted the single tear that rolled down his cheek.

Then something registered with me. "What makes you think that I would destroy the crystal?" I asked, suspicious and, truth be told, a little paranoid with all the little mini-conspiracies that had been floating around lately.

"I don't know. Didn't you say you were going to destroy it?" he asked.

"No, I didn't." I wrinkled my forehead, rather confused. "Oh, shit!" I shouted.

"Conditioning!" we said in unison.

---

The only real way to tell if one has been conditioned - which is a lot like brainwashing, except people who are brainwashed can usually figure it out alone, but conditioning is a lot sneakier - is to have one's mind scanned. And this is both uncomfortable and intimate, since the person doing the scanning is usually using a scalpnet to live all of the person being scanned's memories.

"But, which one of us is it?" Ammik asked, terribly uncertain. "I mean, I've never been, I don't think."

"That's right, you don't think. The people you think are behind this may now be at all. Memories are easy to manufacture, skew, and change."

"Oh. But how…?"

"We're going to go back to the fleet. We'll not turn Micosucci in, since I have reason to believe that her crime may have been a ruse to help with our little predicament." I searched my pockets until I found it - a small, rectangular chip on a chain. "Can you program?"

"Of course," he said.

"On a Liera system?" I asked, eyebrow cocked. Liera is… Let's just say very advanced and leave it at that.

But Ammik agreed anyway. "Alright, use this as your id for now. I'll authorize it when you get all the information on it." I gave him a look. "Well, go on," I said, slightly irate. He went.

I sighed, weary at heart. I went to my room and stripped off my armor, then shuffled off to the shower. And after that, I climbed into my bunk and slept.

---

Ammik woke me up with all of his banging about. Somehow he had gotten into my room and taken it upon himself to clean it.

"How long have I been out?" I rasped. He fetched me a glass of cold, sweet, caffeine-filled drink.

"Eleven hours, I believe. I finished programming the chip and came looking for you, and your door was open, so…" He shrugged.

"Any messages?" I asked. "Aside from the ones from telemarketers."

"No, none, not even telemarketers," he said. "That's odd. I was a hermit for seventy - err, seven years, and even _I_ got telemarketers."

"I think they're all servants of Satan," I said brightly. "So, where's the chip?"

He pulled it from his pocket. "Here," he said. Then he searched his other pocket. From it, he drew the pink crystal. "And here, also. I'm sorry, but I don't know what came over -"

"Hush. No one knows what's happening when they're conditioned. Here, sit," I told him as I moved up into a sitting position and indicated the clear space on my bed. From one of the shelves above my headboard I found my laptop and inserted the chip.

I looked over all of Ammik's data and asked him to clarify a few details, but otherwise he'd done a good job of programming. I put in my thirty-nine digit authorization code and that was it. Ammik was now a member of the _Noon Star_'s crew. And now that he was crew, I filled him in on our rather strange policies and procedures, which is really a list of verdicts from the various disputes Kou'al has settled.

"Wait, so if I hit anyone in an argument, they have the right to call me out on the field of honor?" he asked.

"Yeah. It's really best to avoid confrontation. So, when you're called out on the field, what do you do?"

"Shake hands with my opponent and say… Nothing?" he tried.

"Right. Now, to the companion-related regulations…" At his look of extreme distaste, I asked, "What?"

"Vow of celibacy. Don't ask," he advised me.

"Oh. Ah… Well." I had been made decidedly uncomfortable. "Okay, skip that then. So… Okay, that's pretty much it." I left my pleasant little nest of covers and found some clothes, simple off-duty style blue jeans and a long-sleeved, white, collared shirt, and white flip-flops, since I was really too tired to bother with mag-lock boots. "Can you pilot?" I asked hopefully.

"No, I can't," he said, eyes lowered. Evidently, not knowing something annoyed him greatly. Bloody scientist.

"Well, I can teach you something, then." We headed to the bridge and I showed him where the pilot would sit if we were working with a full crew instead of just me, him, and the computer. He sat.

"Now, this is going to be difficult, as a full bridge crew consists of… eight, counting the captain." I looked around. "Liera?"

"Yes, Substitute Captain Evans?" Liera's low, ladylike voice answered.

"Please provide holograms on all posts except pilot and scan."

"Yes, Substitute Captain Evans." Androgynous holograms appeared at each post.

"Now, trajectory plots a course for the ship to follow. Scan watches readings and provides traj with the information it needs to plot an obstacle-free course. Pilot's job is to follow traj's instructions. But, we don't have a traj today, which is usually the case, so, you have to learn both jobs at once."

"Lovely." He looked mildly ill.

"Hey, don't feel bad. The first time I piloted, I blew up a moon." I smiled fondly at the memory. "So," I said as I came to lean over him, "here," I pointed to a box on the screen, "is where the information that I'm sending you will appear. All you need to do is keep us from getting killed."

"So, when the ship blows up, what do you die from, shockwaves, fire, lack of air, wounds from flying metal, or radiation?"

"Um. You are of a cheery disposition and I value you. Now, don't kill us."

---

It went better than I had figured. I just had to keep telling myself this as I scuttled around on the hull with a welder, spot repairing various holes.

---

A/N: I'm a clever little bunny. Yes, Morrick is back, back for real this time, and he's grown up a lot. I hope to actually do a better job of this than I've done with the others. And in regard to Ammik, he's the Ammik first mentioned in _Pizza Is_, and he's not yet the Ammik from _The Devine Secrets_. Oh, wait, I haven't fixed that yet. Crap. And Ammik does NOT look like Silas from _The DiVinci Code_, which I saw last night, and it was awesome.

May 20, 2006


	2. Chapter 2

May 20, 2006

Disclaimer: This humble author owns nothing but her own thoughts, and she doesn't get paid for them, so she might as well live up to being a blond.

---

I sometimes wonder why life is the way it is. Why we are alive, why we hate, scheme, pillage, and rape. Why we're still _alive_ if there's a god that cares for us. I think I've come to grips with the fact that any god who might have created the world has long since gone away and left us all for dead, but the thought still stings.

"Substitute Captain Evans?" Liera said over the intercom. "Please report to sickbay."

"Negative," I said clearly. "Override policy, code," I typed my code into the nearest panel, "effective for maximum twelve hours." Which meant that Liera was forbidden from bugging me about taking antidepressants for twelve hours.

"Override code incorrect. Please report to sickbay," Liera said, and I would have sworn that she sounded smug about something.

"I'm ignoring you," I growled. I turned to my screens and found them blank. Of course. If my code was incorrect, I was to be presumed a hacker or other such unsavory character. "Liera, return power to my screens."

"I'm ignoring you," replied my voice. "Presumed interloper, please report to sickbay."

"I'm changing the AI once we get back to the fleet," I muttered. "What do I need to report to sickbay for?"

"Brainwave scans show unhealthy levels of activity."

"So, I'm depressed, and yet my brain's going super fast?" I asked. "Fine, if it's just that. Liera, beam me to sickbay."

"Aye, Captain," she said, and I think she may have chuckled. Damnable AI. I was beamed away quickly, so I wouldn't have a chance to change my mind, I think, and directly into a bed.

But not a sickbay bed.

---

When I woke, my sight was blurred badly. I couldn't bring up my hands to check the state of my face for all the silky cord and delicate chains that bound me. Now, I've seen and done a lot of unpleasant things in my relatively short life, and most of that hasn't scared me, but the idea that someone, an amorous someone, had been touching me when I wasn't conscious to either enjoy it or fight them off, that revolted me.

I heard humming. Distinctly female humming, and familiar as well, the song and the voice. It was a song called "Lullaby" and I listened to it a lot when I was a child, and the voice went farther back than that.

But that had to be impossible. For the woman that sang that when I was young had been changed, and she had died in painful bitterness, too cruel to sing.

The woman I spoke of was Elizabeth Warner, the former love of my life, who transformed into a callous Wraith when she came into space. The woman who I kissed and thought of marrying and hoped to spend the rest of my life with, until she had kissed Santino Diablo, one of the commanders of the fleet. After that, she denounced me and later took her own life. Or we all assumed that she had taken her own life. After all, not many can survive leaping into an engine, and it being radioactive to boot.

"Liz?" I asked as softly as I could, so as not to surprise her.

I was awarded with a sound slap to my already pained face. "Don't try to see!" she screamed at me. Oh, yes indeed, it was my beautiful Liz, hormonal insecurities and all.

"I can't see. What'd you do to me, Liz?" I asked, keeping my voice calm, though I wanted to leap up and hug her.

"Drops," she answered softly. "They mess up the focus on your eyes for a while, and then they wear off with no damage. I'm good, aren't I?"

My sweet, vain, beautiful Liz. "I don't know, Liz. Are you good, or are you going to get gap sick again and try to kill me?"

"I'm sorry," she said. "I can't help it. I've tried everything, and -"

"You haven't tried everything. If you had tried everything, you would have found a way to contact me or K'ata and we would have come and helped you." Which is true. K'ata and Liz had the whole Female Conspiracy thing going for them. "We could have used nanytes, or a zone implant, or reverse conditioning, or -"

"What makes you think that I want your help!" she screamed at me again and grabbed me by the hair. Sometimes I think it might be better to just shave my head, but I don't have a smooth, pretty head; I was one of those strange, knobby-headed babies, which is why my mother let me keep my hair long. "I don't need you."

"Then why'd you kidnap me?" I asked smugly.

"I… None of your business!" She released me. "I just wanted to see you."

I was silent. That was surprisingly sweet for Liz's new character. "Did it ever occur to you that I might want to see you? That I might miss you? That I still love you even though I've found another?"

"You've found someone else?" she asked, her voice hurt. "Really faithful, aren't you?"

"Well, you went crazy and started loving up on Diablo, and then you tried to kill me, and then you leapt into an engine, so I didn't think you'd care." Which is true.

"I couldn't help it! It was the mutation, and the gap sickness!" She was crying. I still remembered the way her voice sounded when she had tears rolling down her face. "I love you, Morrick!"

"And I love you, but I can't 'love you' love you anymore." I tried to free myself from my bonds. "Liz, I need to get back to the ship. K'ata is gone, and my brain is doing funny things, and not 'ha ha' funny, either."

"What do you mean, 'gone'? Is she…?" Liz asked, fear in her voice. She really did like K'ata, and I had guessed this, but I hadn't known with certainty.

"She's been kidnapped by other Yautja who want to return her to her order. She's not dead, as far as I know. Me and another guy who the Yautja were using and his comatose fiancée are heading back to the fleet now to check on things, report this, and get our heads checked. So, Liz, if you would?"

"Morrick, I'm sorry," she said. She leaned over me and began messing with the knots and chains, loosening them, freeing me. "But, before I let you go, I want you to agree to a couple of things."

"I can't promise I'll agree, but go on."

"First, I want you to agree not to take revenge on me." I nodded. "Second, I want you to agree not to get another to take revenge on me." Again, I nodded. I had never really cared for revenge. "And third, I want you to take me with you."

"What?"

"Take. Me. With you." I was silent. "Morrick, I'll accept whatever you want to do to fix my -" She choked on the words. "My problems, but if I have to be back with people. I'm going crazy, and that's saying something."

"Liz, I can't love -"

"I know that!" she snapped as she freed my left wrist. "I'm not asking you to love me. I really don't care what new trollop you've got, either. I just want to be back."

"She's not a trollop. And I can't do anything for you now, without Doctor Galintha or Doctor Edemar." In other words, my doctors, who specialized in my unusual brain. "I'd have to keep you sedated."

"I don't mind," she said. "I told you, I'll accept."

"Well… Alright. You can come back with me." And it was no shock when she threw her thin, cold arms around me.

---

It took a while for my sight to refocus, but it was alright. Liz reassured me that there would be no lasting harm, but I still had sickbay run tests on my ocular efficiency.

Ammik was shocked to see Liz. She still looked like a particularly fearsome Wraith, and to him, an almost human-looking Wraith, this was quite terrifying. So, I quickly sedated her and tucked her away in another life pod.

"You know," Ammik told me as I locked the pod, "if the USPC were to run a check on us, they'd charge us with slave trading."

"Why?" I asked. The thought hadn't occurred to me yet.

"Well, we've got the two females locked in life pods, which is kind of like suspended animation, and we fit the profile." He shrugged. "Guess we have to hope we don't run into any USPC."

"The United Space Policing Companies won't be able to scan this ship. We're illegals, remember? We take precautions." I smiled. "Plus, I can outfly them easily."

"Or you could let me fly, if you want all the evidence destroyed," he added ruefully.

"Hey, don't talk like that. We've already got one gap sicker aboard." I looked at the time. "Come on, we'll be in range of the fleet soon."

---

It took a little longer that I had expected. Four hours longer.

"Okay, so, if you had to choose between fighting K'ata or fighting me, who would you choose?" Ammik asked.

"To win, or for a challenge?" I asked. "You're kind of scrawny, you know."

He smiled one of those infuriating secret smiles. "Oh, you'd be surprised at what I can do. I might _look_ scrawny, but looks are deceiving."

"Uh huh," I said, "yeah, um, you know, I still don't think you could beat me in combat, hand-to-hand or otherwise."

"Is that a challenge?" Ammik asked innocuously. "I mean, we've _got_ time."

"Now in fleet radio range," Liera said, ever the _dues ex machina_. I hit the play button, which sent off the message that I had recorded earlier, giving rudimentary information and codes only. After a moment, I received a reply.

"Junior Commander Morrick Evans, permission to dock denied. Alien presence found. Please ignite air ducts."

Damn. Well, I know that there were aliens onboard, but not an "alien presence" in the ducts. K'ata and I had burned the ducts after we'd gotten through saving the pacifists, so that only left three places for something to invade: space, which was doubtful, Micosucci's planet, or through the transporter system.

"Ammik, bring up a schematic of the internal ducts," I said and spun around in my chair a few times.

"Here," he said. The ship appeared on screen, and immediately, I saw the problem.

Not only were the ducts infected with Reaper booby traps, but the side of the hull was being corroded.

"Ammik, don't say anything," I ordered him. "_Dark Glory_, this is _Noon Star_, come in please."

"_Noon Star_, what's the problem?" Kou'al's voice came in, perplexed. "We told you to burn the ducts."

"Yes, Kou'al, but if you look at the side of the damned ship, you'll see why I can't." I was in a 'situation': I could be as testy as I wanted.

Silence. "Morrick, we're beaming everyone off the ship. Send the state of the population." Which means, tell him how many people are on and where they are.

So, I did. He was not pleased.

---

"My orders stated that you were to return Micosucci to the Renox embassy. Why didn't you?" Kou'al asked, showing a good deal more restraint than I would have in his place.

"We believe that a conspiracy is in effect," I stated simply.

"And he's involved in it?" Kou'al asked, indicating Ammik.

"He _was_, as in, he isn't anymore." Ammik was standing beside me, with his hands clasped behind him. It helped sweeten the fact that he'd been handcuffed. "He wasn't willing to work with the other Yautja anyway."

"So he says," Kou'al replied. "The only way to be certain is to use a scalpnet."

"Which is what I told you anyway," I said triumphantly. "And you're going to need to do me, too."

"Well, if that's that then, I'll just get your report from Doctor Galintha. I know _she_ won't add any heroic embellishments."

"Err, I was hoping for Doctor Edemar," I said apprehensively. "'Cause, you know, Doctor Galintha is a little, err, fond of needles."

"I know," he said. "Go." I took Ammik by the elbow and drew him away with me.

---

"Morrick!" Areyole Galintha said cheerfully. "So good to see you again!"

"And you," I told the tiny blond woman reluctantly. "Allow me to introduce Ammik… du Michelov?" He hadn't given me a surname, and since Wraiths don't have names, I figured that he had made his up.

He considered for a moment, and then he nodded. "Yeah, and Morrick? Could we maybe take these cuffs off?"

I looked over at Doctor Galintha. "We're in her care. Ask her."

"I don't care," she said. "Liera, release the prisoner from his bonds." The cuffs fell from his wrists, and he nodded at the doctor.

"Thank you."

"Now, Doctor, I'm fully vaccinated, so you shouldn't need to use any -"

"Oh, yes, that's what I've forgotten! The blood samples," she said, and then the words I loathed most, "Morrick, your clothes?"

"I hate you," I muttered as I went off into my room. "I really, _really_ hate you."

"Ammik, you can just wait in here," she said sweetly. He had a horrified look on his face. It was surprisingly similar to my own first expression at hearing Doctor Galintha's manner of dealing with her patients. "Go, go on, into the nice little room."

Yep. He was going to _hate_ her.

---

"So, Morrick, how are you feeling today?" Doctor Edemar, the mustachioed brain-specialist extraordinaire, asked me casually.

"You can't prove a thing," I replied heatedly.

"Ah, still been practicing, I see." He was referring to my innate anti-subversive self-defense mechanism. Whatever that meant. He had told me to be more vehement and had given me some ideas to work with. Well, he deserves what he gets, then.

"You can't prove it! Maniacal laughter," I said cheerfully.

"You're supposed to actually laugh, not just say 'maniacal laughter', idiot boy," he told me.

"I believe that you calling me an idiot is supremely unjust and misapplied. Everyone knows I'm a -"

"Idiot girl?" he asked.

"No. I am merely silly."

"Aha. That explains a lot. Now, if you could please repeat that last statement into the microphone…" He twiddled with his moustache. "Morrick, I saw you not three months ago. Why ever are you back early?"

"Because I can't bloody well do much if I've been conditioned, now can I?" I asked peevishly. I began pacing.

"Pacing is bad for the nerves," he said.

"Who cares?" I asked blithely.

"I do, as I was referring to my own nerves. Now stop it and sit down. What makes you think you've been conditioned?"

"The fact that someone else remembers things that I should and yet don't. That usually means that someone's been conditioned." I looked around the room. "You really should get a different interior decorator. Who could do this to a room? I mean, really, goats?"

"One, my wife, and two, I like goats. Morrick, I think I know your problem."

"Which one?" I asked. "I have a lot of them."

"You have ADHD, Morrick," Doctor Edemar said gravely.

"You mean Attention Deficit Hyperactivity - Ooh, look at the cute wittow goatie-woatie!" I said in my best 'adorable yuppie' voice.

"See, Morrick! You can't concentrate on anything. You haven't been conditioned, you're just ill!"

"Or, they're using this as a distracter to keep you from getting to my actual purpose." I continued to look at the goat-themed statuaries. They were absolutely adorable and hideous at the same time. Remind me to ask Mrs. Edemar where she got them.

"Or that," he said. "And she got them off intergalactic eBay."

"Oh, cheers," I said.

"You know, I think we might need to have you checked out," Edemar said unhappily. "Well, there goes Battleship with those nurses from _Red Dawn_," and then he sighed, like _I_ was responsible for getting myself brainwashed.

---

The Devil Chair. A striking figure, possessed of many pointy things. Oh, and demons. It's really a demon trapped in a chair, which means it does its job, but it complains a lot and frequently asks people to kill chickens on it. It also chases me sometimes, but Doctor Galintha had it bolted to the floor, so it has to put a lot of effort into chasing me, and as everyone knows, demons hate expending a lot of effort.

But that doesn't mean I have to enjoy sitting on it.

"Feed mah!" the chair said loudly as I entered the room. "Feed mah da ooman!"

"No!" I shrieked as I tried to climb into Doctor Edemar's arms. It really wouldn't work, as all the doctors aboard the fleet seem to be petite and Edemar is no exception, and I am as I mentioned earlier quite large and muscular. "Anything but this, anything! Start amputating stuff, use lasers, even more needles, but not this!"

"Morrick, your irrational fear of the Devil Chair is quite futile and expends far too much of your psychic energy," Doctor Edemar said, disentangling himself from me. "Perhaps we should have a conference about this fear. Have you ever considered how the Devil Chair feels about your fear of him?"

"I'm be a it, and me likee da fear!" the Devil Chair replied. "Feed mah!"

"See?" I asked. "It wants to eat me."

"Have you ever considered that the Devil Chair has no ingesting orifices?" Doctor Edemar asked me curiously.

"No, it doesn't, but it has lots of sharp things with which to stab me and spill my blood across it," I replied primly. "And I'd thank you not to ever say the word 'orifices' to me in that tone ever again."

He threw up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Fine!" he practically screamed at me. "We'll use another chair!"

I smiled serenely as the Devil Chair moaned.

---

"So, you got out of having to do the Devil Chair thing, eh?" Ammik asked me, still shaking from _his_ encounter with the thrice-cursed _machina inferna_.

"Yeah, you'll get the hang of it eventually. You just have to get the right balance of logic and expertise with tantrum-throwing." I sipped a blue, fizzy drink. "So, how bad was it?"

"Awful. He said -"

"The Devil Chair is an it," I reminded him.

"I'm talking about the doctor, Eddie or whoever he is. The one with the freaky moustache. He said that I wasn't going to be able to know the results until after the dude with the name that sounds like an Australian bear gets through reading them and yours and makes a decision."

"His name's Kou'al. So, we should be hearing from him in a little while. Hey, how do you know what an Australian bear is?" I asked suspiciously.

"I feed off of psychic emissions," he said. "It's either this or the hand-sucky thing, until I figure something else out."

"Yeah, go with the emissions," I said uncomfortably. "If you go back to the hand thing, I won't be able to hang out with you any more. Pride and self-preservation thing, if you get what I'm saying."

"I got ya," he said. "So, how many times have you been conditioned?" he asked lowly.

"Eighty-seven and a half," I said morosely.

"Oh," he said. He then edged away from me almost imperceptibly. Almost.

"Oh, what's that for?" I asked, hurt.

"'Cause, Everin always said that crazy was contagious."

"Well, you want to go look at Everin's hand and see where his ideas got him?" I asked scathingly. Really, I'm normally not this hormonal. It's the conditioning.

"Sure. Why not?" he said, casually flipping his hair back, damn him. I wish my hair would straighten decently. Stupid, sucky, gorgeous, curly hair. Wah. "I'd been meaning to ask you about that anyway."

"Well let's go on then. Kou'al will probably find us there, in any event."

And go we did. Straight to Kou'al and Turi Shepherd's trophy room. Now, the first thing you have to know about Kou'al and Turi is that they're as different as fire and… not water, but maybe earth. Turi was from the town that was southwest of my own dear Raydenville, a small yet modern village by the Amityville lake. Kou'al, when hunting Everin Michelov, was injured, and Turi helped him. Later that night, when he had finally bagged the scientist, Kou'al found Turi, killed her abusive foster brother, and brought her to space with him. Later, rather than accept the credit from Michelov's bounty, he demanded that the other scientists splice Turi with a new genetic makeup. He chose the traits he believed would allow her to survive the longest, and despite the fact that she was mad at him for a while for giving her a tail, things worked out pretty well. Now they're pirates. And possibly lovers, but I'm not going to try to find that out. I don't want to be blinded.

As I told Ammik all of this, his eyes became huge and his jaw hung open for a moment until I told him that baby dragons might mistake all his sharp teeth for spires and decide to nest in his mouth. He looked at me oddly. "But dragons don't exist," he said suspiciously.

"Fine. We'll go to the engine room and you can meet Dhralar, _Dark Glory_'s energy dragon. He's quite nice, actually." I looked at Ammik again. "What'd I just tell you about the baby dragons?"

"You're crazy," he finally said. "And Master was right, crazy is contagious, 'cause I actually believe you."

"Yay!" I said and did a little happy dance, right there in the hall.

"Wow," he said when we got to the trophy room. "It's very…"

"Don't bother trying to put an adjective with it. I've tried. All it'll take is that one, itty-bitty adverb: very." I went ahead and strode jauntily in, mindful not to step on any of the various bones that had been thrown on the floor.

"Why's it so messy?" he asked.

"Their son, Mart'am," I said simply. "They adopted him, which means killed his parents and stole him from his clan's Elders. Now, since the both of them are too young to know anything about discipline, he runs wild."

"Ah. Will I ever meet him?" Ammik asked.

"I hope not. He's on another ship at the moment, terrorizing them instead of us." I looked at the various Crayon sketches of battles, desperate moments, and packs of weenies being thrown at Kou'al. (I was there when that happened; it'll come up later, don't worry.) Soon, I found the one made like manga, with lots of small divisions and everything drawn anime-style: Turi's work, surely. Kou'al and Turi separate, then together with Turi helping him with his injury, and then with Kou'al battling Michelov and triumphing, and then with Turi thrown over Kou'al's shoulder and him dragging Michelov as they all headed back to his ship. Below it, in an airtight case, was an ugly, bony, oily-looking, black hand with startling white claws a foot long with Kou'al's bright green blood still glowing on them.

"This is it," I said cheerfully.

Ammik came and stood beside me. "Oh," he said softly. "It -" He swallowed hard. "It's really a hand."

"Naw, it's an ear!" I said, laughing. I patted him on the shoulder. "Come on, don't feel bad just because he got his hand cut off. He had it coming, from what little information I'm able to pry out of our leaders when they're drunk. Which isn't often."

"It isn't that," he said. He was turning green again. He was making a face similar to the one I make when someone hits me and it hurts but I'm not mad at them at the moment, I'm just worried about whether I'm going to have to have anything realigned. "It's just… He'd have had to go through so many splices, so many reconfigurations, so many -"

"And all those scrambled his brain, and he ended up not paying any attention to what he turned himself into, and he ended up like that," I gestured to the cartoon, "and Kou'al was sent to hunt him down." Again, I patted him on the shoulder. "If you don't cheer up, I will be forced to hug you," I said solemnly.

He forced a smile onto his face, which was scary, as there were a lot of teeth. In fact, I don't really think it was a smile. I removed my hand from his shoulder and stepped away a few paces.

Liera's voice came over the intercom, breaking our smile-induced awkward silence. "Would Junior Commander Morrick Evans and Guest Ammik du Michelov please report to Captain Kou'al du Ra'Kesh's quarters?"

"We're up," I said uneasily. "Look, if it's bad, I can make sure we get exiled somewhere nice."

"We won't be exiled," he said slowly. "I think we'll be executed."

I gasped. "Oh, man, can you tell? Is it that psychic emissions thing? Does that even work over the intercom, because I've read about psychic vampires being able to do their thing over the phone, but I'm not sure it would work unless Liera was somehow sending Kou'al's intent over the waves too, and that's kind of freaky since she's just an AI," and I would have gone on, but Ammik laughed, so I wanted to know why he would laugh at possibly being executed.

"Dude, I was messing with you!" he said, still chuckling.

I thought about that for a moment. "Yeah, but _can_ you tell…?"

"No, dammit!" he said. "Come on, let's go."

And we went.

---

"Morrick, I loathe and detest having to read about any fantasy that begins with, 'I am alone, with my sheep. But my sheep are not alone with me'," Kou'al said, clacking irritably. His little mouth-claw thingies were moving, never a good sign. "And you!" he shouted at Ammik. "What kind of idiot would think Elizabeth Warner is attractive?"

I made to raise my hand and then thought better of it, since my feelings have since changed. I gave Ammik a thumbs up, though, and a nod.

"Well, would you rather have me thinking you're attractive?" he asked, boldly timid.

"And would you have my fantasies start out with, "I am alone with Kou'al. But Kou'al isn't alone with me'," I asked, wiggling my eyebrows in what I'm sure is a suggestive manner.

In response, Kou'al aimed a laser at the both of us. It was a big laser. I became scared. So did Ammik, I think, since I don't think under any normal circumstances he would leap into my arms. "Enough silliness," Kou'al said. "The bad news is, you've both been conditioned quite badly."

"Badly style-wise or thoroughness-wise?" Ammik asked.

"Both," Kou'al said. "The good news is -"

"He just saved a bunch of credit on the fleet's insurance," Turi said, turning around in her chair so we could see her, all six foot seven of her, long black hair, white skin, green eyes, red lips, long, xenomorphic tail and all.

"Turn around and don't talk," Kou'al commanded her.

She did turn, but she also said, "One day I'm gonna go Lady Godiva on your ass, you know that?"

"I know, and that's one of the many reasons I love you, but shut up for now, please. Now, the good news is that once we found out about it, your conditioning dissipated. And, we also got a lot of good information about K'ata's kidnappers from Ammik's memories. And, we know how to cure Micosucci and Liz."

Ammik and I leapt up and down whilst hugging one another. Then, as we realized that both Turi and Kou'al were watching us, we parted uncomfortably, me pink and him green. "So, why don't we have K'ata back and Liz and Micosucci roaming about?" I asked.

"Well, that's the problem. The kidnappers have the weird-twins' cure, and we don't yet know where the kidnappers are," Turi said. "But we do know who they are."

"Who!" Ammik and I asked in unison.

"Us," Kou'al said, grieved.

---

A/N: Can I leave a cliffhanger, or what? Yes, I know, I'm awesome. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And the weenie story will come soon enough. And no jokes about it already being here, as this is _not_ the weenie story and there are no weenies _in_ this story. Wait, let me rephrase that…

So, what do you think? Do you like it? Is it funny, profound, interesting, what? Review, okay? Reviewing is good for the soul. Reviewing will make your hair grow back. Reviewing will help you get a tan. Reviewing is fat-free. Reviewing is high in antioxidants. Reviewing is CFC-free and every time you review, you help save the rain forest. Pregnant women should review, as fetuses have shown a higher mental ability rate when their mothers reviewed than when they didn't. And, most importantly, reviewing will make you stop smoking. Cheers!

May 23, 2006


	3. Chapter 3

May 23, 2006

Disclaimer: This pretty polyester kitty can't even tie her shoes, so why are you people always accusing her of owning something?

---

I spun around in my chair. I don't know why, but spinning makes me feel better. Maybe my mother did it when she was carrying me.

"Morrick, I don't like this," Ammik whined. He was referring to both the situation and his suit. "It's uncool and heavy and it feels a lot like wool."

I stared at him.

"Alright, let me rephrase that. The situation is uncool and wooly, while this suit is heavy. Happy now?" he asked testily. I continued to stare at him.

"Morrick, you're scaring the noobie," my girlfriend and second in command, Rachel Houston, chastised me. "He can't be expected to know the rules of telepathy yet."

"Alright," I said finally. "Here are the rules. One, no one uses telepathy while working. Two, no one uses telepathy anywhere else. Three, if you do use it, I'll stun you and have you put in a life pod for the duration of the mission. Clear?"

I received a lot of "Yes, Captains" and "Si, Commodores" and "You got thats" from the various crewmembers present. Ammik gulped and nodded.

"So," I said a little more gently, "You have to be clear with what you say."

"I still don't like it." He spun around in his chair.

---

The reason people were being afraid of me and calling me captain was that we were on a mission. And that mission was a result of Turi and Kou'al's decision regarding K'ata's missing state, Liz's instability, and Micosucci's mental absence.

"We need you to find her kidnappers," Kou'al said. "We have the coordinates, since we did it."

"I don't understand!" I shouted at him. "How can you have done it? The Yautja I saw wasn't you or anyone I know."

"Exactly. He's Kou'al, only from Kou'al's mind, and it's not one of the pleasant parts of his mind, either." Turi looked at Ammik, who was green again. "Why are you green?"

"I have no idea," he said. "Improved blood circulation?" Turi gave him a dubious look. "What? Really, I don't know!"

"Alright," she said, still not believing him. "Morrick, I want you to take Ammik, the girls, and a skeleton crew to the coordinates and work on breaking the firewalls and wards and whatever else they might have waiting for you. Do not seek confrontation, do not seek conversation. If they hail you, do not respond. If they fire on you, which is unlikely, get the hell out of there."

So I did what they told me. And here we were, with Ammik whining about the uniforms I'd assigned, Rachel admonishing me, and the crew being yes-men. It was going to be a lovely mission.

---

I lay in my bed, looking out the little, round window. We were going through one of those enormous, nebulous clouds. This one was composed of myriad shades of blue, my favorite color. Just looking at it cheered me greatly.

Rachel's presence beside me cheered me also. We had been close since my first day aboard Dark Glory, when Rachel had stood beside me as we watched Liz and Commander Diablo get down and funky with it. Now, we contented ourselves by living together.

My influence on our quarters was an abundance of crocheted doilies. Hers was an abundance of large and mildly frightening weaponry sitting on the doilies. Absurd, yes, but my life has been filled with absurdity since my eleventh summer.

Speaking of absurd, I could grow to hate her obsession with filmy nightgowns. The age of consent in the fleet was sixteen. Rachel had only just turned fifteen. So, I had two choices: surrender and be blackmailed, or persevere and be miserable. Since a captain cannot risk being blackmailed, and a captain is what I hope to be, I had to be miserable.

"I'm getting you flannel for the next holiday," I growled.

"The next holiday is three weeks away," she reminded me archly. "I've got pajamas a lot more translucent than this."

"Do it and die," I said through clenched teeth. "Why do you always have to play the jailbait?"

"'Cause it's fun," she said, laughing. "Come on, you're not that badly affected."

"Depends on what you call affected."

"Oh," she said, mildly shocked. "Flannel it is, then."

"Thank you," I said, relieved, but knowing that I'd have to go through this same thing the next time I sought my bed. Rachel had found that she could fake amnesia and get away with it, if only she managed to stick to her story.

A few moments later, she stepped lightly back into the room and turned around a few times. "Less affecting?" she asked.

That depended. Rachel was attractive no matter what she wore. With her dark brown hair cut short and allowed to curl wildly, her light, creamy skin, huge, dramatic, blue eyes, and soft, pink, smiling mouth, with her graceful movements and just the right amount of meat on bones - I detest overly thin women - she was my idea of perfection. Add that to the fact that she was witty, sweet, a genius, and a dog person, and you have my soul mate.

Of course, I'm not going to tell her this until she's safely beyond her sixteenth birthday, as she would be insufferable if I told her earlier.

"You may reenter the nap-zone," I said sleepily. She bounced on the bed a few times and then settled back into my arms.

"Sleep well, Morrick," she whispered. And if a whisper can be knowing, I'd swear hers was.

---

I sat in my captain's chair, an enormous contraption at the center on the bridge, surrounded by my crew, which consisted of four of the best scan, traj, pilot, and data configuration officers at Kou'al's disposal. If we needed weapons or communication, I'd step into one of those, and if under some strange circumstance we might need both, the pilot was well trained enough to live without traj. They worked in eight hour shifts, with Rachel as the late shift commander and Ammik as the graveyard shift commander.

Now, we just have to hope nothing happens in the graveyard shift. Or the late shift. See, I'm a good captain.

"Data, what's the matter?" I asked, seeing the dark woman at that post shift uncomfortably.

"Not used to this kind of mission, captain," she replied.

"Well, Anjour, let me tell you something," I said coolly. "The reason you aren't used to this kind of mission is because Kou'al keeps us all safe. And, he keeps me and mine in deep space, so you aren't used to being commanded by a kid. However, am I dead yet?"

"No, captain," she responded.

"Am I dead yet?" I asked the other crew members. They all responded negatively. "Well, I think I'm doing a good job, then." I settled back into my chair. I hated being a young captain. I wanted to be like Captain Picard, only with hair, and without the French accent and Borg ex.

Why is it that I'm always made to feel like the lady captain from _Voyager_, then? I growled discontentedly to myself.

When the chronometer finished with my eight hours, I headed to the galley, on this ship consisting of tables, chairs, and a computer equipped with a matter-energy converter… _thing_. It, like most everything else in space, is powered by the dragon in the engine room.

What, you thought I was _joking_ when I told Ammik about the dragons? Please. Dragons are a source of infallible energy, and, wings having long since become inoperative or crippled in battles, they are completely willing to be toted around through the universe. Or, in our case, multiverse, since we have a particularly gifted dragon on _Dark Glory _who supplies the entire fleet with power.

Back to the question of foodstuffs. I like pies. Unfortunately, the computer _doesn't_, and this leads to a lively debate most days. However, I was tired, so I settled for a high protein, high carbohydrate… _thingy_. Oh, sure, it looked like food, but still. In no part of the multiverse should leafy greens taste like _chicken_.

I piddled around in the galley for about half an hour, looking at the vast multitude of soup selections for no real reason that I knew of, and then grew incredibly bored. I felt a distinct need to go visit Ammik.

---

You thought I was going to go visit Ammik, didn't you? Wrong, ha ha! I went to visit Liz.

She sat in a recliner, edgy as ever, and occasionally tossing dirty looks at the two guards at her door-thing. There wasn't really a door in sight: it was the brig. You don't leave naughty people with doors! Of course, Liz had been quite decent, but given the fact that not only had she not been scanned, but also that she was now a Wraith, a nasty species even on a good day, and she knew this and her human side won through anyway. My Liz.

I had decided to keep her lightly sedated, which calmed her down enough as to not be maniacal. Whenever we burned the engines, which messed with the gravity, or changed course, which was done by a mix of internal spin and thrusters and therefore screwed up the gravity for a moment, or just messed with the gravity for the fun of it, Liz got gap sick, but not as badly so as most. Currently, we weren't messing with it, so she was relatively calm, but a large, teal bruise dominated the right side of her face, from a previous maneuver.

She had changed clothes, since leather never really was her style and that's what Wraiths wore most of the time. Now she wore a soft-looking white gown. It gave her an austere, authoritative presence, which she belied by sticking her tongue out at me when I asked the guards to lower the force field on her archway.

I stepped into the room and the guard threw the field back up. I ignored this and focused on Liz. Her eyes, icy blue when she had been human, hadn't changed. She smiled weakly at me and gestured to a chair close by. I seated myself and asked about her bruise.

"Ah, well," she said, wincing. "No gravity, so I floated up, and then, suddenly, gravity returned." She glared at me.

"I told you to wear mag-lock boots or shoes or something." I rose and went over to the wall console.

"I think that thing's broke," she said dubiously. "And I don't like footwear anymore. I have _pretty_ feet now." She held up a foot for me to inspect. They _were_ kind of pretty, I have to admit.

"I'm getting something for that bruise. Makes me hurt just looking at you." I typed in my code and ordered one of the odd chemical salves Doctor Galintha insisted upon when needles helped nothing. The one I ordered just happened to be pink.

"You are an evil manling," she told me through clenched teeth.

"Don't I know it," I chuckled. "Hold still, this stuff tingles really badly." I knew from experience. Liz was very still, and as the stuff was absorbed into the bruise, its color improved remarkably. Now it was slightly green.

"So, are we there yet?" she asked. "I'm really bored."

"Well, we could always play strip knitting, like they did on _Red Dwarf_," I suggested cheerfully.

"I never saw that one!" she protested.

"I know, it didn't happen. They knitted, but they didn't strip. The other I got from that episode of _Friends_ where they're at the beach and Joey's the sand mermaid and he… I trust by that evil laugh you remember the one I'm talking about."

"Oh, that one," she said, chortling. "Pervert." She sighed. "I miss poker."

"Want me to go get Ammik and whoever else who's cool with us and play a bit?" I asked sweetly.

"There's poker in space?" she asked disbelievingly. "It isn't kitten poker, is it?"

"No!" I said, laughing. "Oh, gods, I'd nearly forgotten about that. Remember, you liked Spike and I liked Dru, or you liked Xander and I liked Anya, one of those, anyway. They cancelled _Buffy_," I added as a sad after note.

"Dude, they cancelled that before we left Earth. Never mind about the poker," she said. "The gravity's going all wonky again."

Needless to say, I departed hastily.

---

Then I went to bug Ammik.

He was reading a tablet by _his_ porthole. He set it aside and looked at me warily. "Morrick."

"Ammik," I said cordially. "Old chum, do they have liquor where you come from?"

"No, and no, I'm not coming with you for a night of carousing." He looked me up and down. "You've been to see Liz, haven't you?"

"Why?" I asked. "Did she graffiti me?"

"No," he said, adapting a far-away look, "I smell her on you. Along with bruise-salve."

"I bet you can't guess what I had for din-din, though?" I mocked gently.

"Chicken."

"You think so too? 'Twas leafy greens, though! And yes, I visited Liz. Not too keen on the brig at the moment. I think we need to establish a ship-wide poker night."

"And she already told you no," Ammik said, face as bland as it could be. "Morrick, I feel strange."

"Had the leafies too, didn't you?" I asked knowingly.

"Shut up about the leafy greens!" he practically screamed at me. "I'm in love with your female!"

"Rachel?" I asked. "You've barely been in the same room with her half an hour, and you're in love with her?"

"Not her," Ammik whined miserably. "Elizabeth." He gave me such a doleful look that I had to laugh.

"My woman? _My_ woman? Oh," I managed through laughing tears, "you clever, clever thing you!" I slapped my knees as I fought for oxygen, since all the laughing wasn't letting me breathe. "You are _an idiot_!"

"Morrick, I'm serious! I love her!" he said, raising his green hands to cover his greener face.

"Dude, do what you want," I said as I wiped away my tears. "Court her, play for her attentions, ravish her in a dimly lit hallway, I don't give a damn. We've broken up, remember?" I picked up his tablet and examined the writing on it. "'The starry blue of her eyes burns like a fire in my heart/My sparkle of life will fall if we must part'?"

He snatched it away from me. "None of your business," he snapped.

"It is my business if you start writing morbid poetry and listening to Wagner on a sub-audible level," I retorted.

"'Tisn't Wagner. It's the Bloodhound Gang," he said argumentatively.

"Whatever. You don't need to be listening to anything that has final lyrics consisting of 'Put the you-know-what in the you-know where', and that's my opinion as captain."

"But it's funny!" he whined.

"So's PANIC! At the Disco, matey, and you don't catch me white-noising them, do you?" I asked cannily. White noise is a sub-audible "brrr" sound that addicts like to play when they can't get drugs. It's soothing plain, and when a song or message is played with it, the listener will find themselves subliminally affected.

"Ya reckon there are rednecks in space?" he asked suddenly.

"Stop with the white noise, dude." I was promptly ignored as he resumed his writing. "Liera, put current track on an audible level."

"'Jeff Gordon is gay… Jeff Gordon is gay…" hummed the speakers.

I merely laughed. "Imbecile. It's your own fault if you go crazy," I said, shaking my head.

---

I then went to mine and Rachel's rooms. I had two choices: sleep, which I wasn't really ready for yet, or clean the suite, which I really didn't want to do.

I cleaned. Honestly, how is it possible for two people to mess up a bathroom to the point of near uselessness? The floor was covered entirely with bath salts. Not mine, I assure you, since they were strawberry-scented, and I use only vanilla or sage oils. Oh well. I'd find some way to get Rachel.

Cleaning is very tiring, I found. When the entire suite was spotless, clothing put away and ornamental things polished, I went off and collapsed in the bed and had the following dream.

"_Morrick?" K'ata asked me._

Huh? _I thought to myself. _This is freaky

"_Morrick, I need you to listen very carefully." Her tone was urgent. "There are mines hidden in your path. If you don't change direction right now, you're going to die."_

What's new? _I thought glumly. _I'm going to die of boredom without you around to make me go on missions

"_Morrick, wake up and alter course!"_

And so I did. To follow orders from one's superiors is, in space, an instinct deeper rooted than even the will to live.

---

"I don't get it," Rachel muttered. "I know you hairy lot are telepaths and all, but dream communication? Seems a bit far-fetched to me, Morrick."

"I'm telling you, it's true. Stop the ship and send a probe if you don't believe me, which you should anyway, since I'm the captain for this mission and I'm only being nice and not pulling rank on you because I like you." I emulated a chicken ruffling its feathers.

"Better safe that sorry," Rachel's scan, a short, plucky redhead named Kevin, said brightly. "Shall I?" he asked, finger hovering over the button that would deploy a highly sensitive probe into my "minefield".

Rachel sighed and shook her head. "Mutinous, hairy lot, you are. Fire the probe, Mr. Larse." And so he did. About five kilometers away from us, it blew up.

I blinked several times. Finally, after much deliberation, I turned to Rachel and said, "Told ya so." She slapped me and told me to shut up. "Now who's the mutinous, hairy one?" I asked gloatingly as I rubbed the pain from my arm.

"Fine, you were right about the mines. Any chance K'ata told you how to get past them?" she snapped waspishly.

"Yeah. Alter course," I said simply.

"But to _where_, idiot?" she asked, exasperated. I gave her a cold look. "Okay, fine, captain. Happy now?"

"No. Who besides Vinny from the Atlantis movies would be happy beside a minefield?" I asked logically. "And no, she just told me to alter course or we'd die."

"Great!" Rachel said sarcastically. "Larse, deploy more probes. Find us a clear space and we'll go from there."

"Hey, at least we aren't dead," I said optimistically. I was awarded with a good slap upside the head. "Oww."

---

About an hour later, when Rachel and her crew were supposed to be off and Ammik and his group were supposed to be on, everyone came to the bridge. The entire crew. Even the little dragonet from the engines watched over her own little screen, since she couldn't leave. Bet you're wondering what everyone was watching, aren't you? I'll give you a hint, it didn't involve me and Rachel mud wrestling in front of the captain's chair.

Got it yet? No. Oh, alright, a moment more. I twiddle my thumbs at your slowness. Ready for it?

We found K'ata's planet! It had been there the whole time, cloaked. Well, really it wasn't a planet but a ship with a bio-bubble around it, full of verdant life, atmospheric air and stuff, bodies of water, etc., all the things you'd find on a planet.

Kevin Larse, Rachel, a girl named Lanna and another named Mehkt, and a boy with a long, furry, twitching tail worked diligently to knock down the various firewalls and wards around the planet-ship. (Before you go wondering where the older people are, I may as well warn you not to. There are enough ways to enhance either youth or knowledge that everyone in space seems to be in their late teens or early twenties, except the Yoda-esque, omniscient people.)

"Who are you?" I asked the one with the tail.

He glanced at me with bright yellow eyes. "A monkey," he said as he typed. I noticed that the backs of his hands and fingers were slightly furry. I figured he was the result of one of those rare mammal to mammal splices. "I go by Tucker," he added.

"Tucker," I said in confirmation. He nodded absently. If I remembered correctly, he was the traj man on Ammik's shift. Oh well. It's space. You're bound to find some weird stuff.

"You know," said Mehkt in her strangely accented voice, "we don't need an audience."

"Yeah," Rachel agreed. "Go visit Miranna. The dragon?" she said through clenched teeth when no one complied.

"Everyone, to the dragon!" I said, not intending to follow. I snagged Ammik as he reluctantly followed the rest. "You're not everyone," I told him. "You're technically a commander. As a commander myself, I'll address you personally, remember." I seated myself in the captain's chair and pointed Ammik to the second in command chair to the right of mine. He sat and gave it an experimental spin. I grinned and joined him.

"Idiots," Rachel muttered.

I ignored her and asked him how the you-know-what you-know-where song was going for him. He turned green and mumbled something along the lines of "I did what you said" and started spinning faster.

"Ooh la la, ooh la la," I crooned. "Foxtrot -"

"Quit it!" he said, clearly disturbed. "Don't make me quote Shakespeare!"

"Do it," I taunted. "Bet you can't, thou smelliest son of a peasant dog's meal."

"Whatever that means," Rachel interrupted testily. "Shut up."

"'Thy mother was a hamster and thy father smalls of elderberries,'" Ammik quoted.

I gave him a confused look. "That's Monty Python, dumbass."

"Eat me," he said sourly. "No one on board knows Shakespeare."

"I said shut up!" she shouted. "We're trying to work here. Do something useful, like contact _Dark Glory _and tell them we've found the planet."

"Chilly woman," I said, pretending to shiver and going brrr. "C'mon, Ammik, it's like Antarctica in here."

"What's an Antarctica?" he asked, perplexed.

---

Having sent a message to Dark Glory on a wide bandwidth, coded, of course, as a telemarketing scheme involving cheese, Ammik and I repaired to the galley where I showed him the leafy greens that tasted of chicken.

"That's just wrong!" he said, munching contentedly on a large, fresh leaf. "It defies nature!"

"Doesn't it though?" I asked cheerfully. "I wonder if you can get other flavors into the leaves."

"Think of how happy the vegetarians will be," Ammik said dreamily. "Meat-tasting rabbit food."

"Uh oh," I said stiffly. "I think I know what's going on."

"What?" Ammik asked, sudden rapt attention transforming his pale face.

"Someone on board is training rodent-like creatures to be…" I paused for dramatic effect.

"What, what?" Ammik pestered me.

"Carnivorous!" I announced loudly.

"Not really," a soft, female voice said close to my ear. I jumped and found a hovering spy robot. It's screen showed Miranna's avatar, a delicate red dragon face surrounded by pink jewels. "I fancied a salad one day and liked the texture but not the taste. Thus, the new thing. I figured I'd unleash it on you people to see if you'd find it palatable, too."

"Oh," Ammik and I said at the same time. "That's creepy," we said at one another in unison.

"Yes, it is," Miranna agreed with one of her growling chuckles. "Do stop it, though," she added on a serious note. "People will think you two are as wacky as the Devil Chair."

"Where!" I shrieked, leaping into Ammik's arms. I might have succeeded, had he not done the exact same thing as I did. So the new situation was Ammik and me on the floor with the bot hovering over the both of us. "Oww," I said, rubbing my elbow. "You know, I don't see the point of jumping into someone's arms. Why do I do it?"

"You've watched too many cartoons," Ammik informed me dryly. He was nursing his thin, bony wrist. "Subconsciously, you want to be Scooby, which would make me a hippie."

"Hippie!" I said gleefully, missing my sister Claudia for the first time in over a year. I always tormented her by calling her "hippie" whenever I spoke to her, back before I left Earth. "Why do you do it, then?"

"I'm emulating you," he said simply, raising one eyebrow in the same fashion I usually did. I shrank away, mildly terrified. _Mildly_.

"Uh, why?" I asked, perturbed.

"Dunno. Seemed like a good idea at the time." He grinned at me. "I'm creeping you out, aren't I?"

"A bit," I lied aloofly. "Miranna, what do you do for fun?"

"Umm…" she thought for a moment. "Melt things?"

"And?"

"Poke said melted things?"

"And?"

"Throw said melted things around the engine room until I get bored or tired?" she tried dubiously.

"Okay," Ammik said, getting the picture as I smacked myself repeatedly on the forehead with the heel of my hand. "What do you do for fun that we could and would do too?"

"Umm…" she thought. And thought. And thought. And finally said, "Mess with that Micosucci person's crystal?" Seeing Ammik's face fall, she amended, "Look at it, I mean. It's locked, so I can't change anything, but I can look all I want. Real piece of work, that girl."

I poked the spy bot. "That's his fiancée you're talking about going through." I looked earnestly into the camera.

"Your face is like a llama's face," Miranna said truthfully. "There's some interesting stuff in there though. It's fun!" The bot moved a meter or two away and turned to us. "Come on, if you're bored."

---

We were bored and we're both pathological weaklings. And nosy; Ammik insists on the nosy bit. We went off to the engine room, mincing our way through the gold, sliver, copper, and jewels strewn about the room. Even a ship dragon likes to hoard shiny stuff. Eventually we found the hub: not the engines, as a noobie would think, but instead a nest with wires rigged to it for collecting the energy Miranna exuded every moment of her existence.

Dragons, large and small, ooze pure, raw energy. Some many years ago this was realized and then acknowledged as the cause for all the raging and maiden eating: all the power drove them crazy. Some trained themselves, but they were still at risk. Most agreed to some form of siphoning or another, and now they're used in most ships, along with the traditional power plants and museum guards. (In the museum they guard physically as well as throwing up large, dome-like, glittering shields. They're very pretty from a distance, but if one gets too close, one's hair may start to sizzle.) All dragons are treated with respect, since everyone knows they don't mind human flesh as a change of pace, and then there's the whole "ability to electrocute with a thought" thing. Of course, dragons are usually logical and interesting to speak to, so people are very rarely rude to them.

I bowed to Miranna as I approached her nest. Ammik followed my example. "Sillies," she said, chuckling cheerfully. "And thank you for sending the crew down. Rachel's usually the only one who visits me." I could see why. _Heart-Light _wasn't an oft-used ship, but Miranna preferred it to any other place in the fleet.

"Oh, yeah. You're welcome." I'd forgotten about that bit, but I wasn't about to admit it. "So, let's go through Ammik's fiancée's mind."

"Mmkay. Oh, but first, I thought I'd like to let you know about this." With her dainty paw she manipulated the projection to show…

K'ata, talking to Micosucci.

My jaw dropped open and Miranna flashed me one of those strange dragon smiles. "Thought you'd like that, Captain Morrick."

---

A/N: He he. I'm good, ain't I? A note on the songs: I don't own any of them, I was listening to them and others as I wrote, and I can neither confirm nor deny the fact that Jeff Gordon is or is not gay, as Cletus T. Judd supposes he is. (I just think he's a bit poofish. But then, I think a lot of things.)

Again, please review. Reviewing will -! Never mind what reviewing will do. The power shut off right when I was fixing to write that. Just review.

And also, I have a beta-reader: Thank you, Nanny Robin! Hope you enjoyed the chapter.

June 7, 2006


	4. Chapter 4

June 7, 2006

Disclaimer: I wonder when the makers of _Power Rangers _will get over their chauvinism and make a _girl_ the Red Ranger. Sigh. Like I don't own anything else, I won't own that.

---

My dog hates me. My full name is Morrick Lawrence Evans. Got that? Okay, so I, in a burst of overwhelming, megalomaniacal egotism, named my enormous, white, shaggy wolf-dog Lawrence. Now, he didn't mind that until K'ata came to live with me and her telepathy rubbed off on him. Most animals regard humanity with utter contempt, but my dog… My dog loathes me.

They say familiarity breeds contempt. They lie. Familiarity breeds saran wrap covering my entire apartment. Kou'al sent me a depiction of the grievous plastic damage before we returned. And how a creature with no opposable thumbs managed this vile act, I have no idea.

When the fleet came to help us get into the enemy Yautja's planet, _Heart-Light _did something very unusual for a relatively small cruiser: she docked. Miranna told us that the ship was evicting us, as she had to do some "diagnostics". Sometimes I think dragons are like Popes: they say they're in contact with important people, but really, they're just winging it.

So, since we really had nothing better to do, we all returned to _Dark Glory_ to do our paperwork and file our reports and, in mine, Ammik, and Rachel's cases, report directly to Kou'al. That's the punishment you get for having the nerve to say you wanted to command.

Now we all sat in Kou'al's office, Ammik biting his nails, Rachel staring off into space - literally; there was a window - and me mulling over the various punishments I could inflict upon my dog to get him back for the various sundry tricks he's played on me, and yet not be apprehended by the Animal Cruelty Prevention Agency. Maybe I could dye him pink again.

"Morrick?" Kou'al asked.

"Huh -" I stopped myself. "Err, yes, sir?"

"'Huh' would have worked too, you know. I'm not a stodgy old coot yet." He chittered, annoyed. "So, Micosucci has memories of K'ata."

"Yes," I established. "We place the memory sometime a few months ago. They were discussing an Earth television show called _Name That Fruit_. I believe K'ata was informing Micosucci of the highly confusing similarities between grapes and plums."

"Shut up, Morrick." Kou'al had leaned forward with his elbows on his desk. "One, I don't care about what they were discussing. All that matters is the fact that she knew something of K'ata. Two, Doctor Galintha has figured out a way to reactivate Micosucci's mind. She _will_ tell us the secrets of this planet-ship."

"I vote we -" Turi began, but was rudely cut off by Kou'al.

"We are not going to blow it up," he growled.

"I wasn't going to say that!" she shouted at him. "Men! You always think you know what everyone else is thinking."

"That's because _I DO_! And it's a pain, I assure you," he said with a pointed twitch of his mandibles towards me.

"Well, Your Majesty, you'll find that you're mistaken. You don't know what I'm thinking any more than I know what you're thinking, so just quit with the whole 'Turi's ideas are crap so we're not even going to let her tell 'em' a'ight?" She glared at him for a moment and then glared at me and Ammik. "If you two end up like him, I'll kill you both."

"Yes, Mother Superior," I almost said, but then thought better of it, as I really didn't want to be a eunuch. A nod was all Ammik and I deemed necessary.

"So, I vote we infiltrate the bubble and confront the enemy. Kou'al's other self, I mean."

"I'm the only one that can confront him, dummy. I'm the only one that can _see_ him." Kou'al began tapping his fingers on the desk.

"Hey, I saw him," I interjected helpfully, not thinking that since Kou'al and Turi meant "fight" when they said "confront", I might have to "confront" Dark Kou'al. "No, wait! No, I didn't see him. I was just joking. These things Eddie are making me do for my nerves, ha ha."

"Thank you for volunteering, Morrick," Turi said, cheerier now. "I'm glad you're not too bright. Tell me, have you ever sparred with Kou'al?"

"No, and I don't want to," I said, shuddering. "He fights dirtier than me."

"Do not!" he denied, looking away. "'Sides, it'd be below even _my_ honor to fight someone as weak as you."

"Why you -! That's it, you and me, right here, right now!" I said, leaping out of my chair and up onto the desk. Or that's what I tried to do. Rachel and Ammik each grabbed one of my arms and held me back. "Let me at him!"

"Look, I know you've got a death wish, but we've got real things to attend to," Rachel told me bluntly. I struggled valiantly, but the two of them together were too much for me. "Don't make me use the Poke of Doom."

"That's an urban legend, stupid," Ammik told her. "Naw, I think we need to sedate him and go on without him." I gaped at him, astonished. This, from the guy that wants to be me? But then I saw him wink at Rachel, so I knew he was joking.

"Both of you, let him go," Kou'al said. "I've been challenged. He'll have to fight me now." He didn't look happy about it. Rachel and Ammik released me and Rachel hugged me.

"At your funeral, do you want goats or sheep?" Ammik asked, oblivious to the gravity of the moment.

---

The Ring of Death. An imposing figure, possessed of many pointy things. Oh, and demons. It's really a demon trapped in a -

Woops. Wrong thing that wants to eat me. Sorry. I'll try again.

The Ring of Death. A large battle arena, from which few return unscathed. I stood in awe of the sheer enormousness of the circle painted on the floor, the stains within it, the lurid gleam of the firelight. And that's just the concession stand!

No. Not really. There's no concession stand. Just the really huge, scary circle with all the swirly things painted on and around it. Kou'al was in his "leisure" outfit: Bermuda shorts, sleeveless shirt, and bare feet. He stood over on one side of the circle, examining the ceiling. I looked up too and saw something like a matter cannon; used like a water hose in a dog fight?

We weren't allowed weapons. As the Challenged, Kou'al got to decide that. I guess he knew I'd choose my light saber. I ran different strategies through my mind; Kou'al is much bigger than me, being about eight feet tall and built really well. He's probably fast, too, or at least he's got good reflexes. I, on the other hand, rely on sneakiness.

My outfit consisted of gym shorts, a t-shirt, and, like Kou'al, no shoes. It's better if you can feel the floor when you prepare to attack. We pretended aloofness, but that soon fell through. Aloofness was for show, and an audience of Turi, Rachel, and Ammik doesn't make a show.

Turi approached the center of the circle with a white handkerchief in her hand. "Ready?" she asked us both. He nodded, and I did the same, though I wanted to turn tail and run. "Good." She dropped the hanky and sprang up, to man the cannon, I suppose.

Kou'al didn't move. Neither did I. I watched him carefully, as he did me. I had a slight advantage in the fact that my clothes were a little baggy: slight muscle twitches that could give away my movements were hidden. Then, he took a step forward. A feint, I knew, so I did nothing. Then he leaped. The expectation would be for me to duck, but I did the smart thing and leaped higher.

Coming back down, I tried for a hold around Kou'al's neck. Bad idea: he expected it. He grabbed me by the arm and threw me to the ground, knocking the wind from me for a moment before I bounced back up and feinted tripping him. He jumped back, falling for it, so I snap-kicked him in the neck: I brought up my left knee for a little more height, in this case about four feet, and kicked with my right leg, snapping up my foot at the last moment and knocking his head back. Hence, snap-kick. I knew from experience that it hurt quite badly.

As he fell back he grabbed my ankle and swung me back, slamming me face-first into the floor. I felt blood stream from my nose, and sparks of light covered my sight.

"First Blood goes to Kou'al," Turi announced. Traditionally, one could choose to end a fight at various different bloodings: First, Third, Seventh, etc. It was perfectly legal. However, any dark side of Kou'al's wouldn't stop for bloodings, and both of us knew it. My limits had to be tested if _I_ was going to fight. And really, I was the best choice for that, since Kou'al's mind doesn't always do what he tells it to. And, Ammik had seen Dark Kou'al, so he could be there to back me up. Kou'al rose and I did the same, not wishing to be pummeled.

I feinted again, this time for a blow to the midsection and instead made an attempt to cold-cock the nice commander as he lowered his guard. He staggered back, and blood came away from one of the blows.

"Second Blood goes to Morrick," Turi said, shocked. I think I was doing pretty well for myself, just by lasting this long. The fact that I had actually gotten blood was unprecedented, however.

Kou'al seemed shocked too. He recovered quickly and grabbed me by the arm and flung me _up_ this time. I quickly decided on a drive kick, which could snap even Yautja bones if I aimed it right. Kou'al didn't let me go, though.

"Third Blood, Kou'al," Turi announced. He'd thrown me down. My arm was rather badly skinned, so he got the Blood. I rolled and jumped back up in recovery. I watched him warily, wondering what I might do to catch him off guard.

Then it hit me. He probably was susceptible to the old "look behind you" trick. I looked beyond him and made my "surprised and mildly frightened" face. It worked! He swiveled to look and I leapt upon him.

With my arms tight under his chin and my knees constricting -- or trying to -- his ribcage, I held fast and hoped that he didn't figure out the only way to dislodge me: fall backwards onto the floor and crush me. There were no walls to run into backwards, and, being humanoid, he couldn't grab me, as his arms wouldn't bend that way.

He flailed uselessly for a moment and realized what I just explained, minus the falling part, or else I wouldn't be here now telling you this story. I tightened my chokehold as a message; he pried at my grip for a moment, tearing skin on my arms with his claws -- accidentally: it's dishonorable to use one's claws to remove an opponent -- but it was futile. I held on.

"I yield," he said thickly.

"Morrick is the victor," Turi said, looking faint.

I released Kou'al and dropped gracefully. Then I ran away and hid behind Rachel. She and Ammik hugged me, and Ammik brought out a kit and saw to my wounds.

"I don't know how you can do that," Rachel said as she dabbed at the gashes on my right arm.

"Do what?" I asked through clenched teeth. It hurt; did you expect me to be laughing? Well, I might do that if something, such as glass or teeth, gets stuck, but that's hysteria -- it doesn't count.

"Fight with your commander," she clarified.

"Oh, that's nothing," I dismissed her notion with a wave. "K'ata and I used to fight all the time on Earth. I was throttled regularly, you know."

"Was there a way out of that, Morrick?" Kou'al asked, rubbing the side of his neck my arm had squeezed hardest.

"Yeah," I said reluctantly. "Jump up and fall back, crushing me. I'm glad you didn't figure it out," I said earnestly. To my surprise, he roared with laughter.

"I, too, Morrick. That's a good one. I think I'll adopt it, if you don't mind." He became serious. "However, you won't beat my other self with something that simple. And honor means nothing to him. Therefore, you don't need to be honorable either. Get me?"

"I got ya. So, Ammik and I could attack at the same time?" I asked brightly. Devious thoughts sported in my head.

"Hey, who said anything about me attacking anyone?" he said nervously. "I don't want to take on anyone, okay? I just want to, like, hide or something." He held my head while Rachel spread salve over my face to keep it from bruising.

"Oww," I whined as it took effect. It was cold, dammit! "You can see him too, Ammik. Even Liera didn't register him until my memory confirmed it. And with Kou'al as unstable as he is -"

"I'm not unstable." He chittered and then gave a rolling growl to underscore the statement. "I'm just a little distractible."

"It falls to us," I finished. "And I bet you don't have the same style as me, do you?"

"Hell no," he said, laughing. "Whoa, that's freaky." He was watching Kou'al's cuts heal visibly.

"That's not freaky. That's nanytes." Kou'al grinned, top mandibles unfolded. "I'm surprised you haven't caught any yet."

"Ha," he said, "as if the mutagens would allow that."

"I want cake!" I shouted suddenly. I strutted off to the galley, attempting to decide: chocolate or butter?

---

Having had my fill of cake and obsequious conversation, I decided to retire and sleep off the leftover adrenaline.

I didn't notice the saran wrap until I tried to open my wardrobe. It covered everything, and when I tried to rip it off, it adhered to me. I looked at my feet and found sticky paper glued to them. That revealed the culprit to me, the doer of the dastardly deed.

"Lawrence!" I screamed. I can scream really loud. Rachel can too, but she sugarcoats it and calls it "singing".

The dog slunk guiltily into the room. "Woof?" he asked.

"Don't play coy with me, you mutt!" I snarled. "Why'd you do this?"

"Woof," he replied coolly. He could talk, but he's often difficult.

"Fine," I said, schlepping over to the computer and delicately peeling off the plastic. "Doctor Carlisle?"

"Yes?" answered the mild-mannered veterinarian's secretary, Mellojn. "Morrick, what can I do for you today?"

"I need to make an appointment for Lawrence." I smiled evilly. "I think it's time we had him neutered."

"I thought it would be funny!" he howled. "Nooo, Morrick, don't do it, I've got a great chance with that tasty Springer Spaniel down the ha-aaah-all!"

"Mellojn, I'll call you back," I said suavely. I even winked at her. Cheeky bastard, aren't I? "Larry, what's the deal? Sticky paper, plastic, and where are the weenies?"

"I thought it would be funny and me and the crew were playing 'Reenactment' and we chose that time with Kou'al and the Glue-Gobblers." He made the puppy dog eyes at me. "Really, it's funny. What happened to you?" he asked, eying my various injuries that _were_ healing, just rather slowly.

"Kou'al and I had a fight. I won." Absently, I looked around the room. "Who played me?"

"Gary. The Australian Shepherd from deck fourteen? Yeah, he was you, and I was Alvin." Lawrence looked at me mournfully. "Don't be angry at me," he pleaded. "I'll clean up, promise."

I sighed. Alright, maybe my dog doesn't hate me as much as I think sometimes. I knelt in front of him and rubbed his ears. "I'm not mad. Just tired and aggravated. Didn't touch my messages, did you?"

"Nope. What, like I would after you took away all my toys when I erased that date invite from Rachel?" He sneezed. "Say, could you scratch under my chin? My claws catch and tear there every time I try… Ahh… Thankies."

"At least get the sticky paper up before Rachel gets back," I suggested. I was thinking of Alvin. When Turi and Kou'al took K'ata in, she brought me, Liz, and Alvin Rivers up with her. Whereas Liz was space intolerant, Alvin thrived. Right now he's in the service of _Red Dawn_, Santino Diablo's ship, learning the tricks of being a pirate. We've a plan, when I become captain, with Rachel as my wife and science officer, to partner up with our own ship.

As Lawrence worked on the paper, I went through my messages. Telemarketers, mostly, but I ran everything through the sub-signal decoder, on the off chance that K'ata might have made contact. The ones addressed as people I knew, I read. There were three. The first one was an irate thank you note from Gary's owner for the stench of weenies being all over his apartment. The second was my gym partner, trying to make a schedule for us. I didn't like the guy, but he made sure I didn't skip anything.

The third was from Our Good Friend, Angus Thermopyle. (Pronounced Ther-mah-puh-lee. Just so you don't mess up and make him shoot you. He hates it pronounced phonetically.) Evidently, he had pirated an ore freighter, cashed in the goods, gone to a resort planet and gotten himself in trouble he couldn't bail himself out of. (Or bust himself out of, since he's a cyborg, fully equipped with lasers.) And since K'ata is his "business partner", and K'ata hasn't responded to his emails, I'm next on the list.

I quickly wired the funds needed to release him and then sent him a message explaining K'ata's missing state. He had been known to enjoy revenge, so it was best not to take chances.

That done, I helped Lawrence get the plastic off the furniture.

---

Supplementary Documentary I: Glue-Gobblers and Kou'al's Capture Of--

The Glue-Gobblers, as they were known, were an experiment gone wrong. They were small, spherical, and acid green, with a taste for proteins and fats. The Amnion, whom you will soon find to be behind almost everything in some form or another, created them to be a type of amniotic fluid moo-cow. They escaped from their containment pods while being transported and hijacked the ship, sending it crashing down onto an unsuspecting planet: not Earth.

The denizens of not Earth were basically not entirely unlike Germans, in the facts that they had a fascist leader - probably me from somewhere in the future - enjoyed beer in vast amounts - if it were me it'd be vodka - and survived on mainly processed, compressed meat in small plastic tubes - what we know now as bratwurst.

The Glue-Gobblers, for some inane reason, saw fit to regulate the wursts. In less that forty-eight hours, they had consumed the entire wurst population. After that, they went into a short hibernation, where they reconfigured themselves to their new task and left the planet starving.

That was when the people called in Kou'al of Ra'Kesh. He was renowned throughout the universe for his skill as a bounty hunter and mercenary, possibly because he was one of the few true psionic male Yautja. (In Yautja culture, the male Yautja are relatively powerless telepathically. They prefer to spend their lives in training, mating, and battling things. The females are the ones blessed with massive amounts of psychic energy. However, on the rare occasion that a male is vastly powerful, he is exiled with honor, unlike the idiots that have little enough to hide and then use their cunning and trickery in battle. Kou'al was one of the honored ones.) And, of course, when you're dealing with something the Amnion created, it's best to have as many upper hands as you can, especially if that means getting a champion that can hide himself utterly from the enemy using über-powerful psycho-kinetic… stuff.

Kou'al accepted the job and was promised a handsome reward for it. (His name was Chuck.) He was also paid quite well.

The Glue-Gobblers had processed the wursts into regular, pink, fingerlike cylinders: weenies. When Kou'al and a highly specialized team, which he drafted on the way to the departure bay from the galley, burst into their Grand Hall of Lying About in a Stupor, shooting things as a warning with that shoulder cannon the Yautja as a species seem to prefer, they quickly converted their reprocessing-selves into pink-projectile-throwing-selves. (This explains the picture in the trophy room of weenies being thrown at Kou'al.) He had been given permission to destroy whatever he needed to, so he took a liberty and vaporized them all, save one, which he skinned on the premises and saved, an ugly green trophy to show and joke about.

The denizens of not Earth thanked them profusely. They developed a temporary taste for weenies until they could restart the wurst factories, and to my knowledge they're none the worse for the entire experience.

Not going to tell you what happened to Chuck, though. That's just too grisly to recount. Maybe some other day.

---

The next morning, Ammik and Rachel woke me with the tantalizing smell of old country cooking. It was a really sophisticated aerosol, though, so I merely cursed at them and covered my head with pillows.

"Wake up, wake up, sleepyhead! Get your ass up, out of bed!" Ammik chanted. Rachel must have taught him that.

"I can hunt deer!" I said in mockery of Orlando Bloom. I'd been dreaming of that movie, _Troy_.

"Mmkay. I suppose you don't want to know about what's inside the ship planet, then, do you?" He flounced away, taking the aerosol can with him.

"Bacon?" I asked. "Err, I mean, K'ata's capturers?"

"Right." He paused in the doorway. "And Kou'al says were supposed to learn to fight together, so meet him in the same place as yesterday at fourteen hundred."

"'Kay." I yawned and stretched, oblivious. "Whatcha gonna do today?"

"Decide whether I'm in love with Micosucci or Liz. Rachel told me I can't have both." He looked glum. Poor Ammik. He trudged away, sighing gravely.

"Lawrence?" I called. "Oh, Larry, my wittow schnucky-boo, where is you?"

My dog padded over to me and glared. "I am neither little or cute. What do you want?"

"Peace, love, and a mighty big spear to mess it all up," I replied jovially. "Want to come help me rescue K'ata?"

"No." He sneezed. I sometimes wonder if my dog might be allergic to people. "I'll lick her face when you all get back, though."

"That's… Disgusting and sweet at the same time. Thanks." I felt for my laptop above my head and found it. "So, reckon Ammik's as good as he thinks he is?"

"Oh yeah," my dog replied. "You should have seen him with Rachel the other day. He favors an aerial attack, with a lot of spinning. Puts more force behind the blows, and he needs that, since he's so slight."

"Hmm. Makes sense," I said.

"Rachel still beat him."

"Oh. That explains the funny walk," I said sympathetically.

"It does?" My dog was shocked. "I thought it was because you tried to do something stupid, like the time I tried to lay claim to a porcupine."

I laughed. "That explains the funny walk too."

"'Twas not a funny walk. 'Twas a painful walk."

---

Ammik sat on the floor in front of Kayla Micosucci's life pod, pondering. I'll not mention the fact that I'd been spying on him with a little hovering robot like Miranna uses.

With his knees pulled up to his chest, he sat there, rocking, staring blankly at the white tube that contained his fiancée. I felt really sorry for him. I'd gone through much the same thing when Liz had her psycho moment, so I knew what it was like. But I also knew that until someone figured out a way to reload Micosucci's mind into her body, nothing could be done, no decisions made, no conclusions reached.

I was about to make my presence known to him and tell him that when the pod shuddered. Cries of panic were heard from within, interspersed with loud thumping and scraping. Ammik had shot back in alarm, but then he was at the control panel, typing in the codes that would release Micosucci.

I disconnected myself from the spybot and decided that I didn't want to see Ammik and his fiancée reunite. I'd go visit later, with a bottle of disinfectant.

---

"Morrick!" Micosucci greeted me warmly.

"Eh, hello," I said, uncertainly. "I take it Ammik told you of me?"

"No. We've known one another for years, silly. You haven't figured it out yet?" Micosucci laughed, which was annoying, since I knew she was laughing at me.

"Who are you?" I asked, realizing that this wasn't Kayla Micosucci, the Renox scientist. Might be her body, but not her mind.

"K'ata of Pran'rel to you, maid-boy." She tried to do the clicking thing that Yautja do to emphasize things, but she failed, miserably.

I stared. A Panic! at the Disco song started playing in my head and I felt faint. K'ata was held captive on and alien planet-ship, K'ata was standing in front of me. Micosucci was comatose, then she's laughing and saying she's my commanding officer.

I started giggling uncertainly. And then hyperventilating. K'ata/ Micosucci had an odd look on their face as I fainted.

---

Supplementary Documentary II: Mind Swapping and Confusion Of--

I'll use Earth's own space program as an example. Don't you think that if the astronauts of the _Columbia_ incident might have been able to save themselves had they been intimately connected with their ship? If their minds were linked to the very machinery they worked with? At least they would have known what was wrong.

In space, we're very, very advanced. We can load our minds into crystals and use those crystals to pilot ships, control mechanized systems, even make missions of mass destruction. We can copy our minds, make millions, and load them into android life forms. We can edit out the parts we dislike, add new bits, fabricate entire new personalities.

And yet. The essential structure of the mind remains untouched. It's as though the mind _is_ the mythical impervious data core of old. Any damage done to a mind can be reversed, given the right equipment and a strong enough telepath.

However, two minds contained inside one brain is impossible. And a brain is used to its own mind, not any other. There would be fundamental difficulties, not technical ones. But perhaps… A theory was once presented. It stated that telepathy is a gift of the mind, not the body, and that were a telepath's mind removed and placed into another medium, such as an android, ship, or even another blank body, the mind would be intact. It would keep itself from being destroyed by the deep-seated, underlying flaws in the vessel, its native telepathy repairing and filling them in.

It would be possible, and K'ata of Pran'rel proved that it was.

---

"Wake up, Morrick," Ammik said softly as he slapped me. "Come on, I can tell you're awake."

"Can not. Mumble mumble snore," I said clearly.

"You have to actually do the things, not say them. Now, up. Kou'al wants to see us all."

Ah, an order from Kou'al. Well, I didn't want to annoy the guy. He's better at revenge than me.

I rubbed my eyes and looked around. Yep, same as when I fainted, only minus K'ata. Micosucci, I corrected myself. Then I grew confused again. There was the open, empty life pod, and there was Ammik, but where was…? I then realized that I must have been unconscious for longer than I had thought, since the wall chronometer was almost thirty minutes past what I'd seen it on last time.

I sighed. "Lead on, I guess. She's really…?"

"Yep," he answered, locking the door. Evidence, I suppose. "K'ata has projected her mind into Micosucci's body. She also knows that the receptor crystal in Micosucci's head has been destroyed, so we have to find some other way to fix her."

"That sucks," I replied honestly.

"Don't it though?" he commented. "But at least K'ata has a plan on how we can get rid of Dark Kou'al and free all the other telepaths he's captured. And retrieve her body, of course."

I thought about this for a moment. "So, what's the plan?"

"Kill Dark Kou'al. We just have to let our Kou'al ride along with us in our minds. What?" he asked, noticing that I had stopped, stiff and stock-still.

"Well, you might be alright with someone else present in your head, but I'm not. 'Sides, it won't work. Two minds can't occupy one head."

"Wanna bet?" Kou'al's voice, or a good approximation thereof, sounded from Ammik's throat. "Two _entire_ minds. It says nothing about a strand of thought, O wizened skeptic. Now hurry up."

"Doesn't that hurt?" I asked Ammik when I was certain Kou'al was gone.

"Nah. It's just a different modulation of vocal cords. Does sound freaky though, doesn't it?"

"Immensely freaky. Think this'll work?" I asked, running a hand through my hair.

He shrugged. "It sounds like a good plan, Morrick."

"Yeah. Key word, 'sounds'."

---

A/N: No dogs were hurt in the making of this chapter. Some Morricks were, though. The Supplementary Documentaries come whenever there's something I don't think can be explained in context and still uphold the already doubtful integrity of the story. The fight scene was odd-feeling to write, possibly because I don't like to think of Morrick as being aggressive.

June 20, 2006


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: Come on, I'm running out of ideas for inventive disclaimers! Just accept that I don't own anything and be happy.

---

I'm not a sneaky person. In no way do I enjoy slinking about in enemy territory.

Which is exactly what I was doing. With Ammik and K'ata by my side, I was tiptoeing my way to doom. We had disembarked from our little landing craft moments ago, unpacking equipment and weaponry and donning our various armor and suits. (K'ata wore the suit. I think we're going to have a bit of trouble extracting her from her new host. That, or go through the Punk/New Wave phase again. (Plus, none of the armor in stock would have fit her new, tiny frame.))

We seemed to have landed in the creepy swamp part of the planet-ship, which didn't lighten our moods any. Ammik, caught between sneezing and battling the hanging moss, was having the worst time with it.

I checked the sensor on my forearm computer for the eighty billionth time that day. It showed high levels of magnetization, which was expected on such an enormous ship. But nothing else.

"Morrick, do you hear music?" Ammik asked, cocking his head in a very beagle-like fashion.

"Music?" I asked under my breath. Sure enough, I heard it. Alternative rock, it sounded like. "Freaky."

"Very." Ammik glanced at K'ata. "What's up with her?" K'ata was staring intently at the source of the music, a slightly baffled and dazed look on her face. She then leapt up into one of the trees and swiftly began heading toward the sounds over a path of branches.

Ammik and I followed silently. K'ata's judgment wasn't usually faulty, and even if it was this time, we were both curious. As we neared the music, the air seemed to lighten and brighten. It became more airy, if that makes any sense at all.

K'ata was ahead of us in the trees. She jerked to a halt, though, and we caught up to her and did the same thing. There was a rock band in the middle of the swamp.

I repeat, there was a _rock band _in the middle of the swamp. Now, does anyone else find this odd? I find it very odd indeed, and Ammik agrees with me.

I stared. Then I pointed with my mouth open. Then I shrugged and looked at Ammik. He shrugged and looked at K'ata. She waved. Then she made a very controlled and graceful fall back down to earth.

"They're alright," she whispered. "They're just doing what the dragons do."

"Rampaging and pillaging harmless villages and eating peasants?" I asked rhetorically.

"No. Creating and harnessing energy." She gave me one of those haughty looks she's famous for and slapped me.

"I deserved that," I said, resigned that even though K'ata might not be in her own body, she was still herself.

The music changed to a far edgier song and the air turned red and hummed. Ammik's hair went poofy and mine did too. K'ata did her telepath thing and saved us all from our rather frightening Afros.

"Let's not put that in the mission report," Ammik suggested. "Oh, wait, Kou'al's already seen." Since I was adamant in my refusal to permit anyone in my head, Ammik was the one having to put up with Kou'al's mildly childish antics.

"Great," K'ata muttered. "Now he'll be singing the Afroman song."

"I hate that song," I whined. "I liked the original."

"Didn't we all." Ammik glared at the air in front of him. I had learned to interpret the glare as Kou'al being channeled. "Hey, you three, quit with the VH1 chat and get back to work. We haven't all century, you know."

"No one's waiting around a century," I noted.

"Just shut up! And get away from the nose ring-wearing punks. I can hear the music."

We all obediently edged away from K'ata. "But no one's got a nose ring!" she protested.

"That's good. Nose rings are for punks," he said in a satisfied tone, as though one of his strange, subliminal demands had been met. "Carry on. You're all doing very well."

"Ammik is channeling Kou'al channeling young Mr. Grace from _Are You Being Served? _and it's funny," I said cheerfully.

The music began to sound like AC/DC so we all ran away. Not because it didn't sound good or anything, but we were just scared. We quailed, quailed like fluffy little animals in the face of a Dodge pickup.

"That was scary," Ammik said.

"Wait till I show you heavy metal, then. You'll love heavy metal. You can go as fast as you want and you can steal stuff and vandalize stuff and there's goats and full body massage and Ozzy eating a sandwich instead of live bats!" I was close to working myself into a foaming from the mouth frenzy until K'ata prodded me sharply.

"That's the autobahn. And I told you not to eat any of the mushrooms here." She turned and looked back at us. "Come on."

We followed her for a while until Ammik fell through a thinly covered passage to hell. That, or a pongee stick pit.

I was wrong though. K'ata grabbed me by the hair and dragged me with her as she jumped into the hole. We fell, and fell, and fell, and then we crashed into something soft and bouncy and well lit.

Ammik lay in a heap on the floor, staring into space. Poor Ammik. He always seemed to be getting into trouble.

"Well," I said sardonically. "That was fun."

"Was not," Ammik groaned. "Was painful and achy-making." He struggled to rise and then lay back down.

"Hmm, this is a nice place to stop," I muttered. "Lovely place to get ambushed, too."

A large hoard of penguins rushed out bearing staff weapons. I didn't know whether to laugh or… laugh. It was _in no way _intimidating. I mean, penguins? Who's actually dumb enough to use penguins as an army?

"Honk honk," one said. It had a shiny thing melted onto its forehead and its armor was gold rather than the dull silver of the rest.

"We don't speak penguin," K'ata said slowly and clearly.

"Naw, duh," the leader said. "I mean, penguin isn't even an official language. If you spoke it, we'd have to cart you off to the nuthouse. By the way, you're arrested for trespassing on private property."

I struggled to cover a laugh. "You're going to take us in, are you?"

"No," the lead penguin said blandly, "but they are." He looked behind us.

K'ata and I looked obediently. We didn't see anything. "Um, what are we supposed to be seeing?" she asked.

"That's just it. You aren't supposed to see them," the penguin said ominously and then cackled evilly.

K'ata looked intently behind us. "Morrick, there's nothing there," she whispered.

"I kinda figured that, since we've been being impudent and nothing's stabbed us yet," I whispered back. "What do we do? Ammik's still messed up and those weapons are real. I think the destruction of small, fuzzy animals is a sin in the fleet, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but we've got to do something," she muttered, pressing buttons on her forearm computer that would arm the lasers on the other forearm. "I think the cannon will do the most damage," she told me.

"Uh-oh," the lead penguin said. "Waddle, troops!" he cried and began a hasty retreat. Well, as hasty of a retreat as one can beat with such short little legs.

"I feel like a sea lion," I stated to no one in particular who happened to be standing beside me aiming lasers at retreating penguins.

"Fat and dangerous?" Ammik asked. I jumped, for he had crept up behind me. "'Kay, so what are we blowing up?"

"Penguins," K'ata said as the fired the first shot. Rather than exploding, the penguin made a sizzling sound and fell over backwards.

"Ugh, that's nasty," Ammik protested, wrinkling his nose as the smell. "I wanna try!"

"Knock yourself out," K'ata said cheerfully.

"You two are sick," I growled. I aimed the cannon and fired. The penguins were nearly vaporized.

"Cool," Ammik said, watching the mist of blood and gore settle.

"Nasty." I turned. "Come on. It's only a matter of time before someone else comes along."

"Wait a minute," K'ata ordered. I stopped walking but didn't face her. "Why'd you do that?"

"Because picking them off one by one is a form of needless psychological torture and I don't condone needless torture."

---

We continued walking for a while until I was certain we had gotten lost. Ammik, in his quest to emulate me, mimicked my certainty.

"I'm sure we've passed that tree before!" he protested as K'ata dragged him along. "I think we should stop and ask for directions."

"Ask for directions in enemy territory?" she mocked.

"She's right, Ammik," I said. "That's not a good idea. However, this is." I took out my smallest laser and etched my initials into the tree Ammik thought he'd seen before. "Now, if we pass this again, we'll know we're lost."

The two made suitably awed sounds at my little stroke of genius and we proceeded. Well, until we fell into another hole.

"This is getting painfully repetitive," Ammik said from beneath K'ata.

"You're too pointy," she complained. "Hang around Morrick more. You'll have to eat more in order to deal with all the stress from him."

"Heifer," I muttered. "It's not my fault you have an eating disorder. It's Lawrence's." My dog had been psychologically damaging the crew for a while before I found out and made him stop. "Wonder what we're going to have to vaporize in this hole?"

"We're not going to vaporize anything," a voice strangely like Kou'al's said, full of mocking, hateful laughter. My cannon was torn from my shoulder, wrenching it painfully. K'ata and Ammik suffered similar experiences.

"Bastard," I muttered. I had kind of been counting on the use of weaponry in this one. "Ammik, you ready?"

"Yep. I want to be… a lumberjack!" he exclaimed triumphantly and began singing about trees. "Oh, I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay. I sleep all night and I work all day."

"He's a lumberjack and he's okay. He sleeps all night and works all day," K'ata and I sang obediently.

My cannon was thrown at me with painful accuracy. I'm not going to say where it was thrown, but it was thrown. "Enough singing. Let me guess, Kou'al sent you three to destroy me, did he?"

"No," K'ata said. "I just came along to watch and then retrieve my body."

"Oh, jolly. You're the only one I was really worried about," the fellow agreed amiably. I made no protest, as I was bent over in pain, trying to catch my breath, but Ammik began singing again. I slapped him.

"Hey, what was that for?" he asked. I answered him by slapping him again.

"So, are we going to fight soon or do I have time to watch the England-Portugal game?" Darth Kou'al asked.

"Oh, go ahead, we were going to watch it too, even though we know it's going to go into penalty kicks and England will lose," I muttered, gasping slightly when I was knocked, not against, but _through_ the wall behind me.

"Don't _say_ that!" Darth Kou'al said. "Gods save the queen! Footy footy footy!" He began to do a laughable rendition of the badger dance.

"What? It's true," I said. "I mean, England and Portugal are well matched enough to keep one another from scoring, and Portugal has a better record with penalty kicks than England, who are 0-2 for games where penalty kicks decide the outcome."

Ammik prodded me mentally. _"You never told me you liked football!"_

"_I don't. He does. I'm just faking him out to get him off his guard so you can feint at him, giving me a chance to attack."_ I made an attempt to pull myself out of the rubble of the wall. It didn't go very well.

"Enough!" he roared. "England! England! England!"

"Eh, Morrick, is this guy familiar in any way to you?" K'ata asked me in an oddly strained tone of voice.

I looked at him for a moment. He looked like a tan version or Kou'al. (Yautja tan green. It's an odd occurrence.) But at the same time, he looked as though he had smoke or water coalescing around him, making his form vague and suddenly false-seeming. I looked even more closely and saw a slightly human-shaped outline within the coalescing impediment.

"_Err, there's someone else pretending to be Kou'al under the shifty Kou'al hologram?" _I asked her silently.

"See? You're not an idiot after all." She smiled. "Now, look closer, consider all you've seen and heard, and then tell me who you think is beneath that hologram."

I squinted at the hologram, determined to prove that K'ata was not, in fact, as supremely clever as she thought she was. "Um, Jet Li?" I asked.

"Nope," Ammik said. "I figured it out."

"Shut up, Ammik," K'ata told him. "Try again, Morrick."

"But I know who it is!" Ammik protested loudly.

"Shut up, Ammik!" K'ata and I said in unison.

"Creepy," I muttered. I thought for a long moment. "Err, do I know him?"

"You do," K'ata said, nodding.

"Uh, that's not Queeaqueg, is it?" I asked uncertainly. "'Cause, ah, you see, I kind of told him I knew some Earth martial arts, and, eh, I kind of don't. And I went so far as to provoke him, and, eh…"

"Ain't Queggy," Ammik said, cheerful.

I thought for another moment. "James?" I asked.

"Which one?" K'ata asked.

I assessed the figure again. Too thickly muscled to be Revan. "Hierachy? You can't be serious."

"I go by James now, mostly," he said, not really paying any attention to us as we discussed his identity.

"Well," I said oddly. "Eh…"

"Nothing to do now but watch the game," K'ata said. She seated herself by James, who had tossed aside the hologram and was now a fairly attractive - but not to me - young British-looking fellow. Ammik joined them, leaving me in the center of the stage, so to speak, looking like an actor who has learned the part of Romeo from _Romeo and Juliet _and has then been asked to play all three of the witches in _Hamlet_. Right then. The show was to commence in about four seconds.

"Eh?" I managed. "Wha…? Yeh!"

"Sit down, O Fascist One," James said. "What, you thought that I existed only on Earth? Nah, I'm pretty much omnipresent. And "Queggy" wants to kill you. He thought you were some bird named Turiya."

I gulped. He had just named the Muse, or in layman's terms, the Mistress of the Universe. One does not name that lady. I had no choice but to leap upon him and render as much harm as is physically possible.

"ARGH!" I roared as I leapt. He was caught off guard and we tumbled together over to the next wall. He didn't have enough hair to get a good hold on, so the whole "beat his head against whatever blunt surface you have available" method would be rather difficult. I settled for trying to throttle him.

And then he went all _Resident Evil _on me. Seriously. Nemesis would have noticed a strong resemblance. There were a lot of teeth and I found myself on the ceiling, clinging there unceremoniously, like a slightly mad ninja.

"Come down, Morrick," Ammik called to me. "He isn't going to do anything to you. You're the main character."

"What?" I asked.

"Err, nothing."

"Oh." I looked at the now normal-looking James. "Alright, look, we're going to have to establish a few ground rules here. No more shape shifting."

"Why?" he asked. "Seems like if you're going to be leaping upon me and attacking me, I need every advantage I can get my hands on, right?"

"Well, you named the Lady. You can't name the Lady."

"Why?"

"What is it with you and this whole questioning authority thing?" I asked. "You just don't. If you do, she'll be provoked into doing something destructive and often rather funny that my old friend Tim would have rather liked."

"Tim the band dork?" James asked. "Yeah, this bird online, she's always talking about him to Alan. That isn't you, is it?" he asked, suddenly edgy.

"Eh, no. The Lady won't give me her passwords. I think she gave them to the other James, though."

"Yeah, Alan told me about that. 'Twas rather a strange thing to do, if you ask me."

"I don't. The Lady is infallible." I floated down to the ground. "Even if she does write crappy fan fiction." I am quite convinced that _this_ year at least I'm going to beat out Heathcliff for "Most Troubled and Handsome Male Lead". Oh, wait, I'm not supposed to know that I'm not real.

"Hey, how can I be talking to you, a book-person who hasn't even got a book yet, when I'm real?" James asked, grinding salt into already suppurating emotional wounds. I made to make a snippy retort, but K'ata stepped in.

"Actually, we're all real in this context of real. We exist here and only here. You, however, are fragmented. The Lady has chosen bits and pieces of your personality, added a few quirks of her own, and created a character similar to what she knows of James, the man she chats with online. You are not that man. You are…" She searched for a proper word. "An abomination!"

"Whoa, chill out, K'ata," Ammik soothed her. "You're not all that bad. Certainly, you're weak and undeveloped, but, if you play your cards right and show us where K'ata's body has been stashed and help up fix Micosucci's mind and all that, you might just be considered for further advancement in the storyline." Ammik winked suavely. It wasn't pretty.

"Eh, no thanks, if playing my cards right means what you're making it sound like." James edged away from Ammik. "In fact, I'd rather be an abomination. Kind of like Vain, I -"

He was cut off by the fact that I had leapt upon him again. You guessed it, that's another one of the Muses That Cannot Be Named. This time I didn't let the fact that his hair was short deter me from banging his head against a hard, blunt surface - the floor - repeatedly.

"Oww. Oww. Oww. Oww. Oww," Ammik began saying sympathetically.

"Shut up, Ammik," I muttered. "Defamers must die!" I yowled.

"Morrick, if you told him who he wasn't supposed to mention, it might make things a lot easier," Ammik suggested.

"Me, defame the Muses! Are you mad, Ammik? Do you expect the horses to start talking to you?"

"What are horses?" he asked.

"I was ranting! You do not interrupt me when I rant!" I yelled at him. I was still beating James' head against the floor. "I can't tell him who we're not supposed to mention, since if I mention them, _I'll_ be the defamer and I'll have to beat my _own_ head against the floor!"

"Oh," Ammik said. "I get -"

"I'm not finished!" I howled. Then I thought about it for a moment. "Never mind. I'm done." I got up off the now unconscious James and looked around. "Where'd K'ata go?"

"She went off to find her body while you were killing James," Ammik said helpfully.

"I wasn't killing him. I was simply…" I noticed that James wasn't really breathing. "Oh. Damn."

"Oh, don't worry, he'll be back. We just have to go bury him in the Pet Sematery." Ammik got a strange look on his face. "Long ago, the Micmac Indians were having a bad winter and they had to turn to cannibalism. So, their burial ground turned evil. Now, children bury their pets there to bring them back to life. I haven't gotten to the part where Louis buries Gage there though." His face returned to normal. Well, as normal as it had ever been.

"Ammik, you amaze me. Only you would be able to ruin a scene with a King reference." I looked at him balefully. "Now, help me drag him to yonder table before I have to kill you, too." I was feeling intimidating, what can I say?

"Morrick, you're strange." Ammik helped me move James, him being heavier that I had at first thought, being made of a lot more muscle than I had estimated. "Now, I guess we'll just have to wait until he comes back to life."

"Uh, no? Ammik, you're crazy if you think I'm staying alone with you and a corpse. I'm going to go hunt for K'ata, and you're staying here with James. When he wakes up, you both may follow me."

"You suck," Ammik muttered. "Fine. But I'm telling Lawrence and he's going to do terrible things to your apartment."

"And this differs from the norm, _how_? Ammik, just guard the corpse," I called to him as I headed off into the veritable labyrinth that was the planet-ship.

---

"K'ata?" I called. "K'ata? Where are you?"

A small, orange kitty bounded over, effectively blocking my path. In a very, very sultry, Angelina Jolie-worthy voice, it said, "For you, I just might be."

I had seen Shrek 2. "No need to introduce yourself, this is a family story. What do you want?"

"Ugh. To not be a kitty any more. Your K'ata is a powerful enough telepath to release me from this wretched body, is she not?" The cat stretched languidly. "I mean, it's not as though I mind it or anything, but I just want my old body back, is all." Her eyes shifted from muddy, animal yellow to fierce, emerald green. "Plus, your Lady commands it."

I shivered. Muses were known for making their wishes known through animals.

"Who are you?" I asked, sweat beading on my forehead.

"Why, I'm Kayla Micosucci. Who did you think I was?" The cat then hissed. "We have company."

Ammik and a very shell-shocked-looking James shambled over. James gave me an odd look and then decided not to got there. Well, I _had _recently killed him. You wouldn't speak to me either if I had recently killed you and then you had been resurrected.

"What's with the kitty?" Ammik asked.

"Eh, this is a Messenger." I didn't bother to explain what a Messenger is. The title is meant to be mysterious. "Ammik, I think this is your fiancée."

"Wha…?" he asked. He stood there for a moment and then looked down. Micosucci was entwining herself about his ankles like a real cat would.

"Miss me, love?" she asked, so amorous that I gulped. Lucky Ammik, I think.

"Eh…" He looked at me imploringly. I shrugged. I didn't know what he wanted; I didn't want to know, either.

"Can I ask one question?" James asked.

"You already have. But you may ask another one," Micosucci said, suddenly prim.

"What the hell is going on?"

I took several long moments and contemplated the question. If I looked at things from a physical angle, it would be thus: I was standing in a dimly lit cave-like area with Ammik, my friend, James, a man who I didn't really know and who I'd just killed and he'd come back to life, and a cat who claimed to be the Renox weaponry developer Kayla Micosucci, also Ammik's fiancée. We were glibly discussing why we were there.

However, if I looked at it from any other angle, I might have to go mad. I was beginning to realize that I do not exist anywhere save this story and others like it. Nor do any or my friends exist. I have been created, not born, and supplied with whatever "memories" as will make the story more interesting. My "life" is a complete lie.

I know this other angle is true. I just don't like to think about it. I mean, if you were a character, you wouldn't like to think about being edited out, would you?

Finally, I answered James. "A whole lot of shit that only the Muse knows about. Hell, even the one creating this doesn't know what's going to happen at the end. Maybe for her, there is no end. Which means there is no end for us, either."

"Well, that was confusing." He snorted and walked off, perhaps to study the lovely, natural cave architecture.

"No need to be such an ass about it!" Ammik called. He then looked at me, slightly perplexed. "I don't get it."

"You don't get what, Ammik?" I asked.

"I don't get how you can know this. I don't get how you can know that none of us exist."

"Oh, we exist. Just not really." I looked into his eyes, fully convinced that he, too, understood our cumulative plight, that it was merely his place to act as though he did not comprehend. "It's hard to explain."

"I think you did a pretty good job," Micosucci said, still rubbing up against Ammik's ankles. "Now, if we can please return everyone to their rightful bodies?" she asked, asperity tinting her mind-voice.

"Right, that mess," I muttered. "Do you know where K'ata is?"

"Yes, I do." With her tail in the air at a jaunty angle, she trounced off in that infuriatingly uppity way cats have. "Follow me."

We followed her a short distance, not really thinking of very ground-shaking things. I was thinking that I wanted to ask Miranna if she could make beef-flavored leafy greens, too. What? I'm an almost ordinary human male. I like red meat, or the flavor, anyway.

When we arrived in the laboratory, K'ata was rising from a life-pod with entirely too many wires. Micosucci's body lay in another pod, with wires attached to its head and other neural ports. (As a rule, the Renox have enough equipment on and in them to be compatible with everything mechanical, from a toaster to a spaceship.) The sight of K'ata almost brought tears to my eyes; K'ata was the only truly close friend that I had, the only one that was still fairly unchanged from the time we had first met, that night on my deck at my house on Earth. Certainly, I had Ammik and Rachel and Alvin and now Liz again, but they were new or they had changed almost beyond recognition.

I did the first thing that came to mind. I ran to her and hugged her around the waist, since I'm short and she's like nine feet tall. She patted the back of my head fondly, which I appreciated greatly, since "fondness" in Yautja culture is the same as "great and lasting affection" in human custom.

She and I broke to look at Ammik and Micosucci and the cat. He was busy attaching wires to the cat's head and rummaging about in various sundry drawers and small boxes for something.

"What are you looking for?" Micosucci asked impatiently. She looked angry too. Her fur was standing on end and her ears were laid back. "Hurry it up!"

"I need to find the cat's personality." He found a small, blue crystal and smiled. He inserted it into the drive that it corresponded to and pressed a button. The cat became limp. Then it seemed to re-inflate with life, but dull, normal animal life, not sentience. He took a long, hard look at Micosucci's body and his smile fell. From his right breast pocket, he withdrew the pink crystal that contained Micosucci's complete mind.

He stared into its depths, thinking deeply. Suddenly, he slammed it hard across the workbench, shattering it. I gasped, shocked speechless.

"I love Liz," he stated simply. "So _she _has to be dead."

---

We respectfully vaporized Micosucci's body. Ammik kept the cat cradled in his arms as we did it. James rejoined us and agreed to return to the fleet with us, owing to the fact that the planet-ship was empty, that his seeming Kou'al-ness had been a clever ruse that served no real purpose, and that he would be really bored alone.

We returned to the fleet, filed our reports, and felt really, really depressed for a long time. And then we ate cake.

---

Here ends Part One of the Morrick Evans Sequel Saga. (Notice the anagram.) We don't know what happens next, but we're sure it'll be one hell of a trip.

---

A/N: Weird, huh? Well, I guess this is just what happens. I've gone off Morrick for right now. I think I'll get on rewriting _The Devine Secrets _or go ahead and write Turi and Kou'al's whole story. Or maybe even give Morrick his own story, the one that created him. Really, I don't know. I'll write whatever I want out of my head and into yours.

Thank you for reading these five chapters. Having someone besides me know this story means the world to me.

The Muse, _Turiya Foul_


End file.
